nr 



JVST TALKS 

ON 
COMMON THEMES 





Class _3^^ailv2JX. 
Book .Te a 7 c79 

Ci)EffirGHT DEPOSm 



AUTOGRAPH EDITION 

LIMITED TO 
ONE THOUSAND AND FIFTY COPIES 

THIS IS NO. 



JUST TALKS 
ON COMMON THEMES 

BY 
ARTHUR G. STAPLES 




LEWISTON JOURNAL PUBLISHING CO. 

LEWISTON, MAINE 

1919 






Copyright 

1919 

A. G. Staples 



MAY -5 1919 



@CI.A52534S 



PREFACE 

This book is a selection from articles appearing 
each day in the columns of the Lewiston Evening 
Journal, a newspaper published in Lewiston-Auburn, 
Maine. This accounts for the many local allusions and 
Maine colloquialisms. 

No apology is needed for the publication of this 
book — or if such apology be required, it should not 
come from the writer. One hundred readers (more or 
less) contend for the distinction of being the first to 
suggest that these familiar essays be put in a book. 
Left later, to the discrimination of the same public, one 
thousand readers professed by letter a desire to have 
copies of this book when published. Whether they 
will regret it, is a matter for the future to determine ; 
but it leaves the publishers comfortable, since they 
have no critics to appease and no large market to seek. 

It will be seen that many of the sketches are auto- 
biographical. Autobiography is always a matter of 
taste. It is true that there is little of interest in com- 
mon lives ; yet, there is value in the sum total of human 
experience. For instance, a certain man who lived a 
quiet life once wrote two books. One of them was to be 
his monument ; in it he "solved" all the problems of life. 
In the other book were told the simple annals of his 
own life. The former book is forgotten — out of print ; 
the latter is read by thousands, daily. The world may 
thus find something of interest in any commonplace 
life — especially if it be told with fidelity to truth. It 
is the fond belief of the writer that if there is any 
virtue in any portion of this book, it lies in the fact that 
these sketches were written out of a feeling of 
intimacy with his public, in a purely spontaneous 
enjoyment of the themes, and in belief in their truth. 

One word more, the material for many of these 
sketches came from many sources, to all of which 
thanks are due without further notice. It is hoped 
that the book will do no harm and there is a faint hope 
in the miraculous — that it may get a smile, or a tear or 
a second thought in a busy world. 

Arthur G. Staples. 

Lewiston, Maine, May, 1919. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

On "Let's Go Fishing" - 1 

On "Being a Martial-Figger" 5 

On "A Toast to the Flag" - 8 

On "Make Your Wife a Partner" 9 

On "The Butterplt and the Pig".— - 12 

On "Dogs-in-General" 14 

On "Sacrifice of the Rose" 16 

On "Women's Back Hair" 19 

On "The Shrines of Home"... -- 21 

On "Maine and Midsummer" 23 

On "Going to the Dentist" 26 

On "Responsibility of a Perfect Baby" 28 

On "The Going and the Coming" — 30 

On "The Old Time District School" 32 

On "The Northwest Wind" ..- 34 

On "Thoughts on the Hen" 37 

On "Furnaces" -... 39 

On "Hats Here and There" 41 

On "Playing the Game" 45 

On "The Poet and the Apple Blossom" 46 

On "Shadow and Substance" 48 

On "Feather Beds, et cetera" 50 

On "Sticking to the Job" 52 

On "The Bath-Tub " 55 

On "Clothes" 57 

On "Hell" 59 

On "Getting There by Persevering" 61 

On "Making the Best op Things" 63 

On "The Other Name for Success" 65 

On "The Voice of the Frog".... 67 

On "The Fair Average of Wickedness" 69 

On "Why One Man Succeeded "....: 71 

On "Believing" 73 

On "It Costs But Two Cents" 75 

On "A Night in the Open" 77 

On "Tom and His Hatchet" 79 



On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 
On 



CONTENTS 

"Trees and Forests" - 81 

"The Golden Rule in Daily Life" 83 

"The Quieter Roax>"..._ 85 

"The Truth Without a Text" 87 

"The Ladies" 91 

"The Price op a Good Time" .— . 92 

"The Wind and the Soul" 94 

"The Appeal of Mystery" 97 

"Them Pants" _ - 99 

"Pitching Quate" 102 

"The Clock of the Centuries" 104 

"The Intolerable" 106 

"Cultivate the Birds" 108 

"You Never Can Tell Till You Try" 110 

"That's the Boy of It" 113 

"AUTOING WITH A ChEERFUL Man" 115 

"Trundle Beds" -— 117 

"Progress and Wonder" 120 

"Fussing About the Weather" 122 

"Being the Whole Thing" 124 

"Beauty of the World" 127 

" Pastures " 129 

"Thinking Twice" 131 

"The Wayside Lily" 134 

"Table Manners" 136 

"Fractions Here and There" .. 138 

"KIeeping a Dog" 141 

"Man's Neckties" 143 

"Making an Impression" 145 

"What This Day Really Means" .— . 148 

"A Certain Form of Laziness" 151 

"Sam as Chauffeur" 153 

"Classifying Men"._ 155 

"Living by Rivers" 157 

"The First Skates" 159 



On 
On 
On 
On 
On 



On "The Scientific Use of Whiskers" 162 



"The Light in the East" 164 

"After Dinner Speakers" 167 

"Walt Whitman and Some Others" 169 

"The First Snow Storm" 172 

"Make Your Life a Living Spring" 174 



CONTENTS XI 

On "Greetings to School Children"... 176 

On "The Old-Time Boy-Shop" ... _ 179 

On "Breaking of Drouths". 181 

On "Owning Half a Horse" 183 

On "Justice as a Solvent" , 186 

On "A Story 'How Hosea Came' " 188 

On "Preservation of the Home" 191 

On "The Pine Tree" 193 

On "Total Depravity of Inanimate Things" 196 

On "The Half Hour Before You Sleep" 199 

On "The Old Country Brass Band" 201 

On "More on the Old Brass Band".... 204 

On "When Belinda Speaks a Piece" 206 

On "Germany's Reconstruction"... 209 

On "Capping the Main Truck".... 211 

On "Haunted Rooms ".... 214 

On "Loving the Schoolmarm" 216 

On "The Dog on the Bridge" 219 

On "Woman" _ 221 

On "Giving Advice, Gratis" 224 

On "Old Pictures in the Junk Shop"..... 227 

On "The Woods of God" 229 

On "Maine in Autumn" 232 

On "Making Out Your Income Tax" 234 

On "Watch Your Step" 237 

On "Little Shavers" 239 

On "Killing the Pig" 241 

On "The Pussy-Willow" 244 

On "The Title and the Family".. 246 

On "Confessions of a Smoker" 249 

On "The Unit op Service" 252 

On "Down and Not Out" 254 

On "The Eternal Sbarch"._ 256 

On "Gentleness as a Practice" 259 

On "Some Stoic Philosophy" 261 

On "Good Majors and Bad" 263 

On "When I Am Tired" 266 

On "Searching Your Neighbor's Past" 268 



JUST TALKS 
ON COMMON THEMES 




ON "LET'S GO FISHING" 

ET'S GO a-fishing. 

I did not say that first. 
The birds said it; the green grass said it; 
the bud on the tree said it ; the wind soft in 
your face with a thin odor of the fields, said 
it; the spring rain on the roof said it, or 
rather sang it, as you have heard it before on some 
night when you lay before the open fire in camp and 
heard the high-powered gales blow off the big lake and 
the branches of the trees softly brushing the roof 
overhead. 

No man who loves to go fishing can be wholly bad. 
He cannot, in the reason of things, get near to Nature 
and fail to look up to the hills and contemplate his own 
place in the immensity of creation — dependent, transi- 
tory, a mystery among mysteries — and feel that 
there is a God. The wind! What a strange thing it 
is! The sky! How strange and awesome a roof! 
The waters! How stirred with music against the 
beaches! The blue hills, how beautiful! The rain- 
clouds and the sun, so full of glory ! Is there any man 
who sits back in his boat and fishes, not feeling that he 
is an almoner of God ? Is there any man who does not 
know that the town and his small belongings therein, 
be they millions, are very trifling by the side of the 
Power that put the color in the lake-side grasses, that 
tinted the spring leaflets on the willows and made the 
very fish that he is seeking with his lure, so lithe and 
beautiful ! 

You and I have a right to go fishing. We have it 
just because it is a part of the religion of the out-of- 
doors. Not even the Hun has a right to forbid it. It 
is a thing — this right — that we will fight for if need 
be. It is a right because it is symbolic of peace and 
freedom. It is a right because it teaches men to be 



4 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

kind and good. It is a right because it softens and 
betters manhood. It is a right because we love it so. 

The same with all Nature. We owe her all that we 
owe motherhood. Out of her being came we — back to 
her bosom we return. To her side we should go as 
often as we can. It is not fishing exactly — not the 
struggle, the patient game, the lure and the strike and 
the prey that I mean by fishing. It is the prospect, 
the preparation, the journey, the first sight of wild 
country, the clean odor of the forest, the distant vistas, 
the first glimpse of the blue, rippling waters of the 
lakes. What a thrill. How the true fisherman's heart 
leaps ! What ecstacy as he sits him down for the first 
time each year by the rusty old camp-nook and ingle. 
What memories. What forgotten faces. What dear 
friends of long ago whose faces shine out of the dusky 
corners of the old camp! Gone! Not — if we fisher- 
men know it. Such sacred friendships were never 
born to be buried in oblivion. No ! They were created 
to be renewed beyond the purple peaks remote, in new 
domains where lakes beneficent will wait for anglers, 
yet. 

Let's go fishing. 

We shall come back renewed. It will be like going 
to "blighty" out of the trenches. We shall be the bet- 
ter for it when we return. 

Let's go fishing. 




ON "BEING A MARTIAL-FIGGER" 

OU rarely see an old chap like me or a sawed- 
off chap (one of the deferred-growth class) 
who has not a very strong martial spirit. 
They are certainly a warlike lot. And 
always were. 

I used to march, in Masonic parades — or at 
least I did once. It was in Skowhegan. I have told 
the story once or twice to listening throngs and most of 
the throng have been very patriotic, for quite a spell 
thereafter. If I could get it into a four-minute speech, 
I think it would sell bonds for liberty. 

When we marched in Skowhegan we had a short 
hike — only about thirty miles or so — on a medium 
warm day, say about 132 degrees in the shade. We 
were in light marching order — two luncheons, one din- 
ner, three collations and the contents of four lemonade 
barrels in each man. Being a Sir Knight, I wore a 
chapeau several sizes too large with a tendency to slip 
around sidewise and present a front view like Geo. 
Washington crossing the Delaware. Looked at from 
any angle, with the plume on the starboard side and 
the knightly emblem of the cross, on the port, I was a 
natty sight. I also wore a man-size sword, which hung 
from a belt that was made for a large person — the out- 
fit being borrowed. The sword hung down, therefore, 
in a sort of discouraged and depressed way, and the 
belt not having the proper friction against my abdo- 
men (and I not having any abdomen) it likewise slipped 
around in sympathy with my chapeau and got between 
my legs — so that really it was hard to tell sometimes 
which way I was marching — hard for me — ^harder for 
the Eminent Commander who as much as said that I 
was no ornament to the parade. I wanted to be mili- 
tary and Knightly and I tried to be, but it was impos- 
sible, with only two hands, to keep my hat with the 



6 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

pointed end in front and my sword at my side. I kept 
both hands going and both legs going ; and that was all 
any one Sir Knight could be expected to do. 

I was in the rear rank. There were four of us, in 
the rear rank. Two Sir Knights, a boy on a bicycle and 
a man selling hot Frankfurts. It was very dusty. 
After we passed the fifteenth milepost, the bicycle got 
a hot-box and fell out. On the twentieth mile, the 
frankfurts began to explode with the heat and one of 
them struck my companion on the baldric and he fell 
out. After that I brought up in the rear all alone. I 
never saw it dustier. I hustled along working hands 
and feet just as fast as lightning — now straightening 
my hat and now pulling my sword out of my shoes and 
leaping over it, anon — I will repeat that word anon — 
doing my best. The head of the parade was ahead of 
me — that much I knew. Occasionally, I heard the far- 
off music of a band. Now and then I saw the form of 
a comrade, his plume nodding in the dust. And then, 
weary of adjusting my hat, I let it slide where it would 
over my nose and walked on, now in the darkness, now 
in the light, as the chapeau slid. 

Along about six o'clock in the evening — as it seemed 
to me, I met a man and asked him if he had seen a 
Masonic parade. He said he understood it was yes- 
terday. I told him that I thought he was mistaken 
and would he inquire, because I surely started today 
and if I had been walking all night, I wanted to know 
it. He said he would and he did, and returning, said 
that I was right. It was still today, not yesterday. 
He brought a kind woman along and she said she had 
seen the parade, but that they all wore their hats dif- 
ferent. My sword then suddenly became tangled in my 
legs as I endeavored to assume a military appearance 
and I stumbled visibly as I passed on my way in the 
parade, leaving the man and woman behind. 

I caught up with my command at the twenty-ninth 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 7 

mile by getting a ride on a grocery cart — ^the boy driv- 
ing frantically. I fell in gracefully. Falling in or 
over was the best thing I did. I was received with en- 
thusiasm. My appearance was surely chic. I was 
carrying my sword on my shoulder. That is all I re- 
member until we were dressing up on the right in front 
of the Skowhegan Town Hall and the band was playing 
"Onward, Christian Soldiers." 

That night we had a dance in the Skowhegan Town 
Hall and the next day we marched all day between 
Waterville and Fairfield, most of the time encircling 
graveyards. Since then I have not marched. Today, 
I sit in my slippered years, thinking of my experiences 
in the battle line. And I know that, if those old lines 
could be reformed and I could be attired as I was then, 
in that identical costume and placed on the Western 
front, and the Germans could see me coming as I went 
thru the streets of Skowhegan, the sight would so 
freeze the marrow of their bones as to give me free 
pathway to Berlin, and Berlin itself would evacuate and 
the Kaiser would plead louder than ever for Peace. 




ON "A TOAST TO THE FLAG" 

GIVE you today a Toast to the Flag of our 
Country — the Flag that has set the whole 
world free. 

I give you this Flag, with all its history. 
The Flag of the first republic on earth to 
make the People superior to the State and to 
declare that all white men are free and equal under the 
law. The first Flag to cleanse its folds from the dark 
stain of human slavery, in the blood of its heroes. The 
first Flag to sail the seas, free and unmolested. The 
first Flag to go journeying forth, across the broad 
prairies beyond the Mississippi ; to ripple forth in all its 
glory from the lofty, snow-clad peaks of the Rockies 
and to blazon in the sunshine of the great Northwest 
along the trail of Fremont and Clark. The first Flag 
to float over enfranchised Cuba and Hawaii, redeemed. 
The first Flag to greet the silent dawn in the vast, 
interminable wastes of the North Pole. 

I give you this Flag, with all its symbols. Its red, 
as of the blood of heroes, living and dead, who have 
loved it and defended it. Its blue, as of the sheen of 
the restless seas, that encompass and protect it. Its 
white, as of the clear day ; the union of all of the colors 
of the spectrum ; the peaks of her transcendent moun- 
tains and the drifting snows of her prairie wastes — 
Aye ! White — clear thru. The Flag that reached into 
the Heavens ; plucked the field of azure and the stars 
for symbols and then set the American Eagle above it. 
to watch, with tireless and searching eye, that not a 
star be dimmed or desecrated. 

I give you this Flag, with all its hopes and prayers ; 
its Faith and Purpose. The bright Flag ; the cheerful 
Flag; the undying, the courageous and the merciful 
Flag. The Flag, that rose triumphant from the sea, 
where the Lusitania went down. The Flag that flung 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 9 

its protecting folds over the widowed, the fatherless 
and the homeless in stricken Belgium. The Flag 
that would not yield a single foot in the terrible 
storm of St. Mihiel, but ever advanced! The Flag 
that has limned the face of the pitying Christ, tri- 
umphant yet sorrowful in the work of Mercy where 
the wounded and the dying lay in long rows amid the 
gathering shadows of the night. The Flag that the 
little children of the world love and do not fear. The 
Flag that spells a new-found liberty to the oppressed of 
all lands. The Flag that has never touched the ground 
or been set beneath the feet of Tyrant Hun or Un- 
speakable Turk. 

I give you, Americans, the world over — our Flag! 
The Flag of a Free People. The Flag of an undying 
Union of sovereign states joined together in the yet 
greater Sovereignty of a Nation. I give you this Flag, 
with its history, its achievement, its ideals ! The Flag 
of the United States of America. 



ON "MAKE YOUR WIFE A PARTNER' 




ET US talk in a common and possibly practical 
way about using woman's brains and busi- 
ness acumen more commonly than is now 
being done. 

Most wives are given no chance to show 
whether they have any business sagacity or 
not. If the wife asks her husband what is troubling 
him in his business he replies that if he told her she 
would not understand. He thinks he is the main-show 
and the side-shows thrown in. He probably never 
gives his wife a cent of money that she does not have to 
beg for and he has kept her so that she does not know 
the difference between a promissory note and a bank- 



10 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

check. He says that she is extravagant. She says that 
she has to grovel so for a cent, that she will be darned 
if she won't be extravagant when she can get the 
money. Thus many a marriage, otherwise happy, 
goes to the bad. 

Women, who are actually doing independent mer- 
cantile or industrial business, go bankrupt less fre- 
quently, on the average, than do men. The founder of 
the Vanderbilt fortune was a woman. The father of 
the old Commodore Vanderbilt, Cornelius by name, was 
a poor business man. He lived by selling produce to 
the people of the city of New York, then a community 
of about 80,000. The family lived on Staten Island. 
The old man Vanderbilt was a truck peddler and a small 
farmer. And he failed at that. The farm went bank- 
rupt under his supervision and was to be sold for debt. 

But it happened that the wife in that household had 
financial ability. She had been allowed a small sum 
for housekeeping and had been able to invest a little of 
it in hens and she had kept books. So, when old Van- 
derbilt came miauling around and saying that the old 
home must be sold, Madame Vanderbilt said to him, "0, 
I don't know." And dragging down the family sock, 
she dug into it and extracted $3,000 in gold, of which 
her husband knew nothing. Out of this, the old home 
was saved — ^just like the movies. When she died she 
left $50,000 in cash. It was she who started Cornelius 
in the way of making money, by advancing him the 
capital for his ferry that netted him $1,000 the first 
year and laid the foundation for his millions. 

And yet there are a lot of pin-heads who think a 
woman cannot possibly know how to do business in a 
proper way. They seem to think that God cornered 
the brains in man. A man's wife should be his partner 
in a going concern, the business of keeping house and 
saving money reasonably. The rounders and the booz- 
ers and the proselyters have very little in common with 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 11 

their wives and want less. They consider that what 
they earn is theirs and a part of what the wife earns is 
also theirs and then what they can borrow, both owe. 
The news-dispatches, the other day, relate that a man 
over in New Hampshire, shot his wife because supper 
wasn't ready. There is more excuse for that than there 
is for not giving a woman her share of the joint earn- 
ings of the firm of "Wife and I." In the case of the 
wife who did not get supper, she was a quitter on the 
job. She should not be killed — of course — ^but she 
ought to be fined her week's allowance. 

So — sine 3 we are working for peace, comfort, 
beauty, joy, human betterments, we ought to make use 
of the vast amount of woman's brains, lying idle 
around the house. Give her a chance to show what she 
can do in running the finances of the family. Turn 
over to her a fair amount of cash per week and make 
her keep books on it. Let her have her own bank-ac- 
count and draw her own checks and paddle her own 
financial canoe — yea, even let her buy her own hats 
and gowns and pay for them. She can do it if you 
divide fairly. I know a woman who runs her own 
house on a fair allowance for keeping her husband as 
a boarder and now she has so much money in the bank 
that he is borrowing it at fair rate of interest. It is a 
certainty, that if your wife has the business-skill as so 
many of them have — all unsuspected — you can turn in 
less money and have more at the end of a year than you 
would think possible — and live better, too. 

Try it ! Try it ! It will end all your bickering over 
money. 



ON "THE BUTTERFLY AND THE PIG" 




HE BUTTERFLY meandered softly thru the 
air and settled on the pig's oif ear. 

There you were — the utility and the beauty 
of life. The butterfly was all one with the 
day — yellow and gold, mingled with the em- 
erald of leaves, blinking in amber sunlight. 

The philosopher who was there looking over the side 
of the pen asked of the Bates Senior what he thought 
of the uses of each. The Senior thought that each was 
useful — to the limit. 

We have a term for idle people — gay butterflies. 
We have a term for supremely selfish people — pigs. 
People to whom the terms are applied are a disgrace to 
the creatures for whom they are misnamed. 

It is safe to say that the Lord knew what he was 
about when He made the butterfly so beautiful. I 
rather think He spread himself when He made a field- 
violet or painted a sky of deep azure in a June day. 
But I am not so sure that He had anything to do about 
it, when He made a man or woman who has developed 
into a vain, selfish, overdressed and extravagant dandy 
or fashionable. So, too, with the Pig in human form. 
A pig is a very useful animal. He is all right in his 
way. So it is hard on the butterfly and hard on the 
pig, to make them bear the name of thinking-beings 
who have merely imitated the super-characteristics of 
the butterfly and the pig and know nothing of their 
aspirations to serve the world, in their humble way. 

The mission of the butterfly is plainly to exemplify 
beauty while it is performing its functionary part in 
the natural system — maintaining some balance of Na- 
ture. The philosophies mention three essentials — ^the 
Good, the Beautiful and the True. One of the elements 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 13 

for which the World war was fought is the beautiful. 
We went into it on this side of the Atlantic, at 
least, for "The beauty of the Lilies that were born 
across the sea." The beauty of ideals, the beauty of 
home and liberty — the world safe for Democracy and 
a Democracy safe for the world — a beautiful thing. 

The human butterfly and the human pig are not do- 
ing much for this ideal. The human butterfly rides 
around in his limousine with a horde of servants to 
look after him ; to dress him and to undress him ; with 
every thought for himself, including evasion of duty 
and work. 

The human pig keeps his nose in his profiteering 
trough and grunts whenever anyone asks him to stop 
feeding long enough to look at the world as it is. If 
you ask him to "give until it hurts" he says "No! 
Lemme alone. This feeding out of the trough is a 
matter of business with me." The earth may rock with 
thunder of the cannon, the sound of his eating may be 
punctuated with the groans of the dying and the sob- 
bing of wives and mothers who have given their all — 
what's that to him ? He is making money and hanging 
onto it. He will lift his nose and enjoy himself when 
the war is over. Poor thing — with bristles on him. 
He does not know that he will never be anything but a 
pig until he stops feeding. He does not stop to think 
that some day the heirs will cut him up into sparerib ; 
smoke him for bacon and salt him down for pork. 
Their only eulogy upon him will be that he "cut up 
profitably." 

Now if the pig — the human pig, I mean, will only 
look at the butterfly's beauty and, as it flies away from 
his off-ear, try to emulate the subtle suggestion of 
God's wonderful message of a spiritual life beyond the 
material; and if the human butterfly will look at the 
industrious pig eating away to the increase of the 
world's material welfare, and will emulate his industry. 



14 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 



we shall have that middle ground of human betterment 
which is the average of usefulness. 

All of which is the purpose of this allegory of the 
butterfly that meandered to the pig's ear and alighted 
there and flew hence, like jewels in the sunshine. 




ON "DOGS-IN-GENERAL" 

HERE is a dog, over in my neighborhood in Au- 
burn, which is a "dog-in-general." He will go 
with anyone. You glance at him as you pass 
by and give him any kind of encouragement 
and he gets up, with a purposeful air, and, 
waving his tail, trudges along with you. 
There is something about him that one cannot help 
liking. His eye has a look like that of a small boy 
chasing a circus parade. His tail seems to be hung on 
ball bearings. He walks cross-legged, just to show you 
that he has accomplishments. He looks foolish and 
acts foolish, but he is a good dog in general. 

Dogs, in general, are various. But a "dog-in-gen- 
eral" is a dog without a master. He is a tramp dog. 
He is like some people, no special attachments to any 
person or place, but a friend of every one. You see 
such people. They are what the French call "vaurien," 
good for nothing except that they are kind, loving and 
wistful and see far ahead, down the dusty road of life, 
strange things that they want to see and for which 
they are willing to trudge along with you to fare with 
you in all adventure. This dog that I know in Auburn 
has been across the Atlantic ocean six times in the big 
liner, chasing soldiers to the great war. Every time 
he saw a soldier in khaki, he got up and took his burden 
of travel and went along with him. He had a soul 
attuned to the mysteries of the unknown. He was not 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 15 

built for the fireside, but for the big places of earth. 
He wanted to enlist but they did not take bull-terriers. 
If he had been a man he would have been "over there" 
in 1914. 

I have seen these dogs-in-general that went around 
with nobody but boys. They had good masters who 
fed them and liked them but whom they would quit any 
time — especially on a roving summer afternoon, or 
some subtle day in June — to go with any boy. The 
more ragged the boy, the better the dog liked him! 
The dog would prefer to go along by the side of some 
meandering brook ; to lie in the warm sunshine ; to kick 
up his heels ; to bury his face in the warm, sweet turf ; 
to dig for the woodchuck; to chase sticks and stones 
thrown in the swimmin' hole — in short just a boy's dog 
— never a man's dog. Any human nature about such a 
dog? Anything in an "onery" dog to remind you of 
some folks you have known ? That dog would never go 
to war. He would not be interested; but he would 
make a good boy-scout dog. Faithful — to boys! No 
name for his devotion. Did you ever see one of those 
big, good-natured chaps in your old-time country-town 
who always collected all of the boys? Nature-loving 
men who liked youth. Well — the boy-dog is a cousin 
of that chap. 

I don't know as this amounts to anything — but I 
want to put in, as the moral to this dog's tale, a plea 
for leniency to the harmless person-in-general. There 
are many of them, whose chief weakness is inconstancy. 
If constancy be left out of a dog or a man, what 
are we going to do about it? They are wanderers — 
that's all. Drifting here, drifting there, doing nothing 
much, until some time as I once saw in the case of a 
dog-in-general, they leap into the sea to save a child, 
they spring into the breach to stop a flood, they come 
along when the house is burning and leap into the 
flames to rescue a life. And then away they go — seek- 



16 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

ing new adventures, forgetting their own heroisms. 
Into this war at last have gone many of them. Wan- 
derers who have been here and there over the face of 
the earth looking for the Great Adventure ! They have 
found it — over there — in the trenches, brave, careless, 
happy-go-lucky souls face to the foe, eyes bright, lips 
wreathed in smiles — ^just as tho thru the veil that was 
rent by the searching bullet, they saw brighter and yet 
brighter dusty highways, stretching on and on forever- 
more, in which it was ever summer, with the birds 
a-caroling and the soft winds lifting the damp ringlets 
about their brows. 



ON "THE SACRIFICE OF THE ROSE" 

AM LEANING over the railing of the garden 
looking at the June rose. My neighbor who 
lost an arm in the Civil War, Spottsylvania, 
is there ahead of me and seems deep in 
thought. He is over seventy years old — but 
not so old as the rose-bush. "What do you 
think of it ?" I ask. "I don't know," is the reply. "But 
God did not make it for nothing, neither the rose nor 
the briar. There's something behind it." 

So here was a man who, almost sixty years ago, 
shed his brother-man's blood in war, standing silent in 
adoration of a June rose. Maybe, after all, it came 
very near to typifying some of the things for which he 
fought — peace in the garden for the rose to bloom, the 
dooryard to the plain man's home undisturbed, the trig 
wife in the doorway, the silence of the night in which 
the perfume of the flowers may pass and repass his pil- 
low unmixed with poison gases. 

"I wonder why," said I to the old soldier, "I wonder 
why God made the rose, if He made it for something 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 17 

and not for nothing? Why did He bother to make 
beautiful things ? Why did He not fill the world with 
meat and drink, iron and copper, lumber and brick, ex- 
clusively ? Why did He not make mountains of dyna- 
mite and smokeless powder and have all His trees bear 
bayonets and rifles ! Why did He make fields of green 
grass when He might have made them of cement so as 
to move great guns the more quickly, that other men 
might be blown to atoms the more expeditiously ? We 
do not need buttercups and daisies! We do not re- 
quire golden sunsets and the aurora. All that we re- 
quire is the superman ; the food for him and the weap- 
ons in his grasp." 

"The meek shall inherit the earth," was the reply. 
And then he shouldered his cane and walked away. 

And so I came back to thinking about the reasons 
for beauty and perfume and kindness. And I asked 
myself if the secret of the world is sacrifice. Out of 
this war, what big thing abides? Is it not sacrifice? 
Are we not all learning what it means to think of oth- 
ers and serve others? Does not Duty point its finger 
at you out of the storm of nations and speak to you 
saying, "Sacrifice." If the secret of the world is sacri- 
fice (and by "secret of the world" I mean the secret of 
evolution spiritually and materially), then beauty takes 
its place and meekness does inherit. The story of birth 
is sacrifice and suffering. Travail is a part of all devel- 
opment. The plant itself gives of itself in reproduc- 
tion and many of them die in so doing. The mother 
gives of her own life to the child. Have you read that 
majestic paragraph out of Charles Darwin, the sum- 
mary of his theories on evolution and the survival of 
the fittest? The mossy bank that Darwin brings into 
his picture, is peopled with almost infinite variety of 
animal, vegetable, insect and other life. But every 
living organism is sacrificing to perpetuate its kind. 
It is building a world thru death for the world's sake. 



18 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

If this be the plan, then every living organism has its 
place and man is among them — dying for the advance- 
ment of the world as a whole. 

And who shall inherit? It is the meek, who, by 
giving here and there ; who, by yielding to the necessi- 
ties; who, by sacrifice and by rebirth, spiritually and 
materially shall perpetuate his kind. The first cave- 
man fought. He was strong. He passed on — con- 
quered by two cavemen who combined, each sacrificing 
something that the other might live. Tribe united 
with tribe and by concessions became strong. The 
state was born. And so on. But never was it the 
superman. It was ever the union of men and women 
each sacrificing, each working for others. 

And it was for this that God made the rose and 
many other lovely emblems of beauty. He might have 
made a handsomer thing than the rose but probably 
did not see the need of it. It blooms just as fairly in 
the waste places as in the garden ; just as lovely in the 
garden of the poor as in the garden of the rich. It 
gives itself a sacrifice to that ideal of beauty and of 
sweetness which is the type of Heaven on earth. We 
are going thru grievous times. But we must not lose 
hold of the eternal truth "that our light affliction, 
which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more 
exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look 
not at the things which are seen but at the things 
which are not seen ; for the things which are seen are 
temporal ; but the things that are not seen are eternal." 

Back of the Rose is God's eternal edict of victory 
thru sacrifice. The meek shall inherit the earth. 




ON "WOMEN'S BACK HAIR" 

VE was the original Jane — with her golden hair 
a-hanging down her back. I have seen sev- 
eral pictures of Eve — surreptitiously — and 
she had lovely hair, always arranged with 
seeming carelessness but with as much re- 
gard for decency as was possible under the 
circumstances. I have always wondered what the pho- 
tographers would have done in the Garden of Eden, if 
Eve had persisted in doing her hair up high. 

A good many people still think that a woman's hair 
looks well, flowing down around her waist. But women 
seem to find it mussy and, as a rule, are inclined to 
differ with Eve as to coiffure. If you should look over 
any of the "Histories of Fashions" in the different 
ages, you would find a great many peculiar structural 
complications in head-dresses. And the more we look 
at them, the more we are inclined to believe that the 
simpler they are, the better. 

It is no business of mine — of course — ^how women 
"do up" their back hair, so long as they do it up in the 
boudoir ; but when they come to the office and keep do- 
ing it up all day, it wearies the flesh. Some of the 
girls nowadays peer out between their coiffure like a 
Spitz dog thru his matted locks. They have succeeded 
in training some of their hair to curl out around their 
ears and about six inches past their noses and it takes 
a good deal of time to keep it there. They have to stop 
between your impassioned declarations, "Your letter of 
the 15th inst. rec'd and in reply will state," to curl that 
spit-lock around their fingers; look around and see if 
their abbreviated skirts have gone to ballooning since 
last heard from, and then, settling themselves again in 
the chair, will calmly go on to write: "Your letter of 
the 15th incident received." In general, the more hair 
and the farther front it protrudes and the more it is 



20 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

marcelled — the less efficiency and the poorer spelling. 

Venus de Milo was another rather good looking girl. 
Next to Eve whom we admire for maternal reasons, she 
was perhaps as good looking as they make. Well — 
Venus did not seemingly waste any time on her hair. 
It was drawn back in a neat wave ; pugged up and there 
it stayed. She said to Jupiter one day, "Jupe, believe 
me, I am one of those women who NEVER touch their 
hair, from morning to night." And Jupiter said, "Veen, 
you suit me from the ground up." Venus has been rea- 
sonably successful. She has had stars named for her ; 
she has been put up at a good many clubs, in marble. 
Why, then, cannot the modern woman follow her ex- 
ample and find some sort of static condition of hair. 
Why do they move the terminal-station of the hair, 
otherwise the "pug" from side to side, from back to 
front and literally "go over the top" with it every three 
months. You and I recall when it hung low on the 
horizon over the coat-collar ; then it leaped to the bridge 
of the nose; then it hung over the left ear and then 
over the right. Then it was obliterated altogether and 
made into an impressionistic picture of a hay-field after 
the grass was cut. Then it was Psychied or Clytied or 
otherwise "tied" and stuck out several feet due west 
into the horizon. Then it was puffed out at the side 
until a girl, coming head on, looked like a yacht with 
her spinnaker and ballooner set, coming down before 
the wind. Then it developed nets and rats and looked 
like a bag of meal on the noble front of loveliness. 
Then it cultivated a suggestion of wilful disorder, a 
sort of zephyr-blown carelessness, like a ball of yarn, 
both ends of which have been lost in the knitting. And 
now — marvel of marvels, it is hiding the ears and will 
next be curled around the lip into an imitation mus- 
tache and around the chin into feminine whiskers, a la 
spinach. 

Hear me again, fellow-countryman ! I do not care 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 21 

a damb (revised spelling) about it, but the other day I 
saw a young woman with fine, well-groomed hair, 
drawn neatly back and not a single, up-to-date chorus 
girl, Mrs. V. Castle flummididdle about it and I was 
happy all day long. And I went home and took down 
the picture of my grandmother with her hair worn at 
eighty exactly as it was worn at twenty, and I said to 
it, "Grandmother ! I understand now. The reason you 
accomplished so much in your life is because you did 
not have to devote twenty-five per cent of your time to 
studying some new place to put that dear old pug." 



ON "THE SHRINES OF HOME" 

OMEWHERE in every shrine of motherhood is 
a tiny pair of baby's first boots — crumpled 
little things, wet with a mother's kisses. 

After that, boys' boots especially do not 
get much of a show as mementoes. They 
come and go — the little affairs — clomping 




and making much weary noise, but yet greatly missed 
after they are silent, the boy in bed — or perhaps 
slipped out of his mother's arms to lie long and still in 
the trenches under the poppy-fields of France. 

AVhat if they should come back and stand at atten- 
tion along the old, yellow-painted kitchen floor back of 
the stove again as they stood in days of yore, all in a 
row. Perhaps it would make the tears come and per- 
haps they would often be chased away by smiles. And 
the girls' boots, too ! Good girls, wayward girls, sweet 
girls, girls with flying hair, girls with sunshine in their 
eyes. Girls gone ! Girls that may come back ! 

Here is a pair of old-fashioned copper-toed, red- 
topped boots with an inscription on the top — "For a 
Good Boy !" Those were the boots that father took in 



22 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

hand forty years ago when he took his first-born son to 
the shoe-store for a first pair of kip winter boots. Dad 
was about as proud of them as the boy was. He 
wanted to know of the dealer if they were "real kip." 
"Yessir! Warranted." Those boots came home and 
were worn with self -consciousness. Men on the street 
would see them and suggest "Seems to me I smell 
leather." A boy would stand around waiting for com- 
ments on his new boots. Cute little boots, were they 
not — especially at night as soaked with the snow and 
wet by the mud they stood with little up-turned toes, 
back of the old kitchen stove. 

You can see the little chap going about in the morn- 
ing with his fingers in the straps trying to get the 
shrunken things on. He kicks on the base-boards and 
sweats at the straps. And at the night-time, what a 
ceremonial pulling off the boots — ^bootjacks and small 
boys assisting. It was some fun to back up to dad, 
take his number ten between your legs, grab hold of 
heel and toe and have him propel you forward with a 
foot on the dome of your little trousers. And the other 
ceremonial was getting out the tallow and the lamp- 
black and greasing them so that they would shine and 
resist the wet. We were very dressy when we had 
half an inch of mutton tallow on top of the old kip 
boots. 

Do we live much outside of the children, after all ? 
Something tender, something indescribably sweet and 
hopeful invests the soul as we ponder on the life that 
comes and the life that passes on thru childhood to 
eternal youth, elsewhere. The little feet that ran at 
play, that climbed into the lap of parenthood, that 
stumbled often on the way, that went yet more and 
more sedately as the years came and went and that, 
perchance, have now turned with cadence of music and 
waving of flags to the call of high duty into the way 
that leads away from the village streets into great 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 23 

duty and perhaps the great sacrifice — what wonder 
that somehow they mean more to us than anything 
else, on the home-altars ! 

Small wonder, then, that baby's first boots should 
be the material memento in so many homes. In these 
hours, to take them out and recreate the dimpled little 
thing that snuggled under the heart; that had such 
fair blue eyes and such flaxen curls; that grew up at 
last and went away forever, is to live over again the 
elysium of young life in the shrine of the family. And 
it is this vision that leads us to take oath that by sacri- 
fice and by giving and by fighting we shall forever 
maintain the right to have these fair flowers of our 
lives come to full beauty and fruition; in short, that 
government of the people, by the people and for the 
people, shall not perish from the earth. 



ON "MAINE AND MIDSUMMER" 




LIE on a haycock and watch the cloud-wrack 
in the sky ; to follow the gulls as, lazily, they 
wheel above; to watch the blue sea heave 
afar; to feel the perfume of each dawn and 
catch the healing breath of every sunset; to 
live as fully and happily as one may live in 
these days of blood — this in Maine, in midsummer. 

What other land approaches it in beauty! No 
tropic country with eternal sunshine; no land of roses 
all the year around ; no valley of the "blest" compares 
with this rugged land of hills and mountains, lakes and 
running brooks, in its midsummer garb. Incompar- 
able Maine ! 

This week we have felt, for the first time, the sense 
of the midsummer noon. The year has run thru its 
eleventh hour and now sleeps in the silence and the 



24 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

heat of that hour when, like the old-fashioned Maine 
village, everything is closed, the store-keepers gone 
home, the streets quiet. The summer haze lies upon 
the fields; the buttercups and the daisies yellow and 
whiten the rolling hills; the music of the mowing- 
machine comes up from the intervales; the yellow- 
birds flutter thru the roadside trees ; the wild rose nods 
and kisses its petals to you along the hedges; the 
brooks run noisily beneath the old bridges ; the gardens 
lift their blossoms as if to say "plenty ;" the blue moun- 
tains smile as if beckoning you on ; the hills lift you up 
and up until they reveal the glimpses of the sea, the 
estuaries and the bays, that run landward from the 
sea; and everywhere, cooling in the breeze, comes the 
perfume of the sweet grass and the new-mown hay 
upon your senses. 

Midsummer! Already the first glimpses of the 
golden-rod in the fields! Already that lazy sense of 
ripening-warmth, of Nature putting in her work. The 
heat in town ; the buzzing automobiles along the coun- 
try-highways with number-plates bearing the names 
of all the forty-eight states in the Union as they come 
and go ; the thronging crowds on trains running double- 
sections; the congestion at ferries where there are 
crossings of rivers more peaceful than the Marne — all 
these tell of the peak of the year, when Nature stays a 
while and waits, delaying the chirp of the cricket and 
the first touch of that diviner-yet period of sweet drop- 
ping away to winter that we call Autumn. 

Who would live elsewhere — once having lived in 
Maine? Who would exchange this midsummer, this 
autumn ; this drowsy, dreamy age of life in Maine for 
any other, when in the distance, he sees as we who love 
it so well, ever do see, the coming of the first snows ; the 
Thanksgiving season crisp and cool, the first snows 
tinkling against the windows; the incomparable con- 
trast of winter! Which do we love the better! We 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 25 

can hardly say. If midsummer with its elysian days 
is sweet, so, too, is the clear, cold, pure, healthy, whole- 
some winter season, when the snows lie white along 
the country roads ; when in the blazing noon, it is sil- 
ver and in the light of the winter moon it is golden, 
even to the end of the world ! 

And so — let us forever tell the truth about our 
M-aine. Let us praise its beauties, as they deserve to 
be praised, and do it everywhere we go. Too many res- 
idents of Maine speak with a half -apologetic tone, in 
mentioning the fact that they reside here. Its history 
is the oldest and the most aristocratic of the states. 
It was settled before Plymouth. It has been the bat- 
tle-ground of civilization while newer states were in 
the wilderness. It has peopled the Nation with brains 
and brawn. It has done its part loyally in every con- 
flict for freedom, truth, nationalism and ideals. And 
here it is — fairer than ever, with its forests deep and 
mystic, with its country-side like a garden, with its 
sea-coast cupped with harbors and with its rivers rich 
in power. 

Apologize ! Instead we should hold ourselves as of 
the elect of the Lord; favored in opportunity; guard- 
ians of a heritage that is priceless. And all this, from 
the noon of a midsummer day, that is not midsummer 
madness. 




ON "GOING TO THE DENTIST" 

LL I have to say about it is this. Some things 
have to be borne. You may be permitted to 
die peacefully, or otherwise, in your bed with 
your vermiform appendix still in your little 
inside, but, alas! a man cannot die of the 
toothache. Would that he could, but cases 
are rare. Death rarely visits with its balm, the person 
who has the toothache or the person who is sea-sick. 

If people could die with the toothache, the dentist 
would have a harder time. As it is, rather than suffer 
the ills we have, we fly to others that we know not of. 
In olden times, the sign outside of the dentist's shop 
was a huge tooth hanging to an iron crane over the 
narrow and soiled stairway leading to his temple of 
pain. The old-time dentist was never in view when 
you went in. He was not surrounded by marble and 
ivory and running water and nickel-plated anaesthet- 
ics. Not so ! He was in the back shop making teeth ; 
and if he saw you come in, he would wipe the pumice- 
stone from his hands onto the seat of his trousers and 
pry open your mouth before you could say Jack Robin- 
son. That swinging tooth represented the exact size 
of the tooth that he pulled. Every time, without fail, 
when as a boy, I parted with a tooth, it measured at 
least eighteen inches wide by three feet and a half long. 
Treating the subject subjectively, there are some 
very good thoughts to be promulgated about the rela- 
tion of the individual to the dentist — especially the old- 
fashioned tooth-puller. G. H. Derby, a humorist of 
national repute in his day, told a story about Dr. Tush- 
worth, a dentist, that is but little known. The Doctor 
tackled a tooth once that he could not pull. The patient 
kicked some about the abortive effort. Doc Tushworth 
felt that a patient had no right to complain about little 
things like that — his business was to yank the molar. 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 27 

So he invented a machine that worked by levers and 
exerted an enormous pull. When he pried open the 
patient's mouth and put in the active end of the ma- 
chine and exerted a few hundred pounds of pressure, 
he noticed that the patient's right foot flew up in the 
air. He didn't understand the reason but he did 
not stop to make investigation. He added a ton or 
two more pull on the machine and the man's head 
pulled right smack off ! at his collar button. Of course 
"doc" got the tooth even if he lost the man. 

An investigation followed and they dissected the 
remains and found that, as we often feel about it our- 
selves, the man's tooth ran down into his body all of 
the way, pursuing a path down his right leg and having 
two prongs that were clinched over on the sole of the 
foot. That's why the right foot flew up when the doc 
began to pull. It saved the doc's reputation and got 
him off with a charge of justifiable homicide. The doc 
subsequently pulled on an old lady's tooth with this 
machine and yanked out her whole skeleton. He took 
her home in a pillow case. It happened that she did 
not die, so the doc was again lucky. And what was 
better, she lived seven years, known as the "India rub- 
ber lady" and was completely cured of rheumatism of 
the bones — having no bones to ache. 

These are extreme cases from the view-point of the 
outsider, but perfectly credible to the man who in the 
golden days sat down and permitted the dentist to grab 
hold of a tooth and yank it in cold blood. Of course 
things are better now. One can almost go prancing 
into the door of the dentist ; but in the old days while 
he went prancing all right, he did not always go in. I 
have pranced miles on the dead run to the dentist's and 
just as I turned the door-knob — pretty softly, too — the 
toothache has stopped in contemplation of the future. 
You can work that several times with some teeth. 
They are as intelligent as a dog that expects a licking. 



28 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

I do not know as there is any moral about this talk, 
but I am sure that it is not immoral and that is a good 
deal. It is pleasant to know, however, that science is 
doing so much for us. It is taking our arms and legs 
off painlessly, removing our teeth with soothing music 
of the ether and the phonograph. Some day it may do 
as much for our sins and iniquities. St. Peter will 
hardly know us. 



ON "RESPONSIBIUTY OF A PERFECT BABY" 




T IS sometimes hard to tell about the Perfect 
Baby. Often it looks like its father and often 
like its mother and sometimes it looks like 
Grandmother Jones and frequently it is the 
perfect picture of Grandfather Pinkham, and 
then again it may trace back and leap over 
into some other family of kin, and look like Uncle 
Hiram Beebe — male or female, the responsibility for 
the physical appearance of a perfect baby cannot be 
definitely located. I have seen a baby that looked like 
some remote grandsire — ^whiskers, hair and funny 
look around the eyes. 

After the relatives have located the lineaments in 
remote ancestry, the responsibility for the care of 
the child falls on a family council consisting 
chiefly of the mother's mother who is supposed 
to be very learned on the subject; the father's mother 
who knows so much about children that it fairly hurts 
her; the old maid aunt who knows a lot, but who 
blushes to say it ; the nurse who is never any good, and 
on the father, incidentally, who runs errands and inves- 
tigates the different kinds of nursing bottle, with a 
later preference for the automatic kind that get up in 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 29 

the night themselves and heat the infant's pabulum. 

There is no greater rush of business known to any 
household than the accession of about nine pounds of 
first child into a peaceful married life. It beats win- 
ning the war or hurrying up the ship-building program 
or making 12,000 aeroplanes in six months. A young 
father averages to be on the dead run to and from an 
apothecary shop eighteen hours out of the twenty-four 
for the first six months of the worry between wind and 
water of child. You can see them darting thru the 
crowds anxiously looking for an opening and a drug- 
gist. They carry their pocketbooks open all of the 
time in their hands. If suddenly aroused while nap- 
ping on a street-car, they look at you blankly and say : 
"Yes, I asked for a dozen rubber-nipples." You talk 
about the responsibility of a perfect baby — it is largely 
on the perfect father. 

Of course I am not going to say that after the nurse 
goes there is not some responsibility resting on the 
perfect mother. She has, of course, a very superior 
article of baby to take care of, in the first place. It is 
not at all like other babies— NOT AT ALL ! It is far 
lovelier and far more nearly perfect and far more 
precious and far more intelligent. Hence her respon- 
sibility far exceeds that of any other mother who has 
just common-flesh babies. I doubt if a greater effort 
was made even in clearing out the St. Mihiel salient 
than in a young mother's first essay, unassisted, at 
bathing a damp baby in her lap. The responsibility is 
enormous. If baby should suddenly leap out of her 
lap! Later in life — say her fourth or fifth baby — 
why she can bathe it ; read Lady Audley's secret ; knit 
socks and chew gum, all at the same time, and if baby 
leaps — why she catches the perfect thing on the first 
bounce and never misses a stitch or loses a word or 
chews a chew, less. 

Of course the responsibility of a perfectly perfect 



30 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

baby is greater than the responsibility for a freckled, 
red-headed, colicky, yawning, criss-cross, sour-smelling 
baby. Of course it is. But who ever had one of the 
latter kind? Huh? Speak up! The responsibility 
for the care of a perfect baby is greater than the 
responsibility for a perfect husband — by a good deal. 
I doubt if there is a young mother who ever regards 
her husband with the same reverence after the first 
baby sets up its dominion. He is distinctly and un- 
avoidably a second fiddle. He is often in the way. 
The responsibility of the universe seems to have sud- 
denly changed. It is no longer on "Husband and 
Woodrow Wilson;" it is on the perfectly precious and 
lovely child. 

It is sometimes said that when we go hence we shall 
re-appear as little children in the celestial pastures. 
We shall then know how to be perfect without discrim- 
ination, without responsibility. I wonder if it will be 
finer than responsible motherhood and perfect earthly 
infancy ! 



ON "THE GOING AND THE COMING" 

HE tides of earth are not more persistent than 
the tides of life and nature. There is a going 
and a coming; a flux and a reflux in all the 
world, from nebulae to atom, from life of man 
to life of star. 

Progress is rhythmic. As the music of 
the violin swells thru the silence, so the music of the 
spheres touches the cold and silent spaces of the uni- 
verse, all swinging to immutable law, balanced as finely 
as the needle on the fulcrum. God is master musician, 
establishing the harmonies, celestial and terrestrial. 
We live in cycles, individually, socially, in civiliza- 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 31 

tion, in national existence. There can be no retrogres- 
sion. What seems such, is the backward swing of the 
curve preparatory to an advance. The sea comes and 
goes ; but it always advances upon the coast-line. The 
seasons come and go, but the earth itself approaches 
nearer and nearer with each springtime to the purpose 
for which it was ordained. There have been dark ages 
in the world's existence, in which it has seemed as tho 
the end had come to all advancement, only to break in 
fuller glory upon some renaissance of art or learning. 

This is what cheers me in this war. It seemed as 
tho it were death to art, to music, to learning, to faith. 
We thought it, many of us, in hours of doubt a few 
years ago. Today, we see new ideals, new hopes, new 
faiths, new conceptions of duty and opportunity. Out 
of it are to come new liberties, new inventions, new 
conservations, new commerce, new arts, new friend- 
ships and from it will pass away many of the fancied 
bonds between peoples, kindred in ideals but separated 
by oceans and strangers by history and traditions. 

It is perhaps a thin subject for your consideration, 
but there is an analogy in life. We learn by troubles ; 
we grow by griefs ; we develop by trials. There is no 
life that has not had its fluxes and its refluxes ; its go- 
ings and its comings of hope and happiness, of welfare 
and distress. We watch the passing of beloved friends. 
The loneliness of life pervades every surrounding. 
But the new impulse is not often wanting to take up 
the burdens and carry them along faithfully. The sor- 
row ennobles. The grief purifies. Great artists have 
been developed by suffering. Insight into hidden 
things comes by sorrows. The Man of Nazareth was 
such. His deeps only emphasized the heights to which 
He attained. 

This is a comforting thought if applied broadly and 
happily. The mother who mourns a son, "over there," 
carries a new conception of life along with her. What 



32 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

she has lost is partly compensated for by what she has 
gained thru new Faith, pride in her son's sacrifice; joy 
that she gave and gave willingly. I do not know any 
leaven, working more surely for national ennoblement, 
than the prayers in little homes all over the land for 
repose of the souls of them who lie low in the trenches 
on the Western front. The widow's weeds, the moth- 
er's tears are to be the symbols of a new nation con- 
ceived in pain as is the lot of motherhood. 

And the substance is : do not complain at things too 
bitterly and never despair ! There is good in all chast- 
ening. Nothing breaks a man or woman but failure 
to keep pace with the return swing of the cycle. 
Watch for it and be ready. It will take you on as truly 
as the world swings on by rhythmic law thru all the 
precession of equinox along the pathway of the eternal 
stars. 



ON "THE OLD TIME DISTRICT SCHOOL" 

TAUGHT school once — ^but only once. My 
school was far from the madding crowd in 
the midst of a snow-infested region of Maine. 
It was a land of plenty — such as it was. One 
could use his knife without comment for the 
purpose of transferring nourishment to his 
system. 

I was a sophomore in college, sixteen years old ; 
weight 102, flat; size immaterial. On the morning of 
my arrival at the schoolhouse I found twenty-three 
pupils gathered around the old box-stove in the middle 
of the room. Most of the big boys had side-whiskers 
or mustaches. The girls were matronly. One of 
them was a red-cheeked Hebe who weighed about 192. 
They ranged in height from about eight feet tall down 
to pupilettes in pantalettes. 

An interstate-tariff schedule of differentials on 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 33 

freight, is like an A. B. C. to the job of laying out a 
runniing-schedule for an ungraded district country- 
school. Every scholar has a different kind of book and 
wants to begin at a different place. I found an average 
of three classes to each pupil, which made sixty-nine 
classes for the day. Allowing an hour for recess, de- 
votional exercises — ^which consisted in lugging in the 
wood and lugging out the teacher — this left me 2 14-69 
minutes per recitation. This seemed short, even to me. 
It seemed to require condensation and intensive teach- 
ing. I did both. By cultivation of the latter I came to 
a point where I could hold the spelling book in one 
hand ; point out the geography lesson on the map with 
the other hand ; poke wood into the old box-stove with 
the other hand; hold the youngest scholar on my lap 
with the other hand, and wipe its nose, frequently, with 
the other hand. 

That youngest scholar was a puzzle to me. It was 
five weeks before I knew whether it was a boy or a girl. 
I was very modest and did not like to ask leading ques- 
tions. It was a boy. He came to school every morn- 
ing with his countenance eclipsed by a hang-over from 
his breakfast. I made the mistake on the first morn- 
ing of opening the business of the day, by washing the 
child's face. Every m^orning in our prayers, after the 
invocation "give us THIS DAY our daily bread," I men- 
tally added "and molasses." Then I took the child to 
the snow-bank and got it. But it kept on daily, nay, 
hourly, exuding bread and molasses. 

I can see that old district school now as I close my 
eyes ; and, in memory, still hear the droning of its reci- 
tations. The sun still shines for me in thru the tiny 
old window panes on the long stove funnel, down on 
those battered little desks, and gleams on the silver 
snow-banks out-of-doors. In every snow-storm, I hear 
the whine of the winds and the ticking of the sleet 
around the corners of the little building, as it did in the 



34 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

long years ago. And all of the memories are pleasant. 
Those moonlit nights around the neighborhood; those 
lyceums where old subjects were fiercely debated with 
fervid eloquence ; those evening-readings when first the 
neighborhood became acquainted with Dickens and 
Thackeray. The eager thirst for learning that those 
boys and girls soon came to have; the comradeship 
that we engendered ; the Latin lessons after school, the 
efforts to prepare for college and for normal school! 
All these form a chapter in memory that nothing will 
efface. 

Some good, kind providence presided over the old- 
fashioned district school as an institution. It may 
have been in the native ability of the old New England 
stock, its brains and its ambitions. But I like to think 
that looking in at the window was the god of kindly 
future protecting the republic and preparing its boys 
and girls for higher missions ; for out of its doors have 
gone good blood, fine intellectuality and high purpose 
for the development of a nation, whose fruits are seen 
in the ideals of this hour along the Western front. 
And every now and then I meet some of my old schol- 
ars of my only school, either a legislator, or a teacher, 
or a lawyer, or a prosperous farmer, and to each of 
them I say, "I don't know where you got it ; you didn't 
learn it from me." 



ON "THE NORTHWEST WIND" 



UDDENLY the wind had shifted. It began to 
blow in the northern windows, cool in the 
night. It rattled the halliards of the flag 
pole and swept things off the table. 

It had been a long spell of fog at the sea- 
shore and the fog-signals had been droning 
for two days and the submarine patrol boats had been 
thrashing along in the obscurity — ^mists wreathing 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 35 

the spruces and blotting out the sun and stars. 

"The Northwest wind will settle all that," said one 
to himself in perfect confidence ; "for nothing else is so 
sure to drive away the clouds and fogs." And sure 
enough, dawn saw the finest scene that nature has to 
offer at the seashore — the perfect day. To see such a 
day is to live all over many dreams and find hope for 
new ones. Islands and opposite shores have moved up 
more than half way. There is so little obscuration in 
the atmosphere that it is like distance in Colorado 
mountains or in the dry deserts. A mile is like a 
hundred yards. You see new things over the way. 
From Squirrel Island, for instance, Monhegan, thirty 
miles away or Seguin over by the Kennebec, seem to be 
close enough to make possible new hand-clasps with 
Mystery. We see people on what seemed hitherto un- 
inhabited islands out to sea. The Northwest wind 
brings us closer together. 

The breaking day with a Northwest wind, means 
setting forth of harbor-stayed fleets — ^fishermen, old 
lumbering coasters, noisy motor-craft, pleasure yachts, 
and coastwise steamers. The sails come out shining 
like silver in the sea. Under foot of their streaming 
bows rolls a liquid floor of ultramarine, flashing with 
white tops. Everywhere the harbor is simply azure 
like the sky, with shining waves white-capped. It 
sparkles and seems alive. It is snappy and makes you 
think of the bending sail and the lee-shore. Every old 
coaster acts like a racer. She trims her sails nattily 
and tries to work a bit more speed out of the old boat. 
You hear them singing at the hauls. The day's in the 
dawn, the dawn's at seven and all's well with the world. 
It is good to be alive — heaven has not forgotten earth 
but has opened a crack of the door and let a little of its 
radiance down on earth and sea. And the clouds are 
fine and the sky is high and the trees are thrashing in 
pure fun of wrestling with the keen old northwest sum- 
mer breeze. 



36 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

We have fogs in the soul and fogs in the intellect 
and fogs in the home, as well as at the sea-shore. 
Shift the wind. Make it a northwester. You can do 
it. If the soul is sluggish, find with some spiritual, 
kindred soul the new breath that shifts the current of 
your being. If your mind is fogged, give it a breath 
of the west wind by a change of venue. If there are 
fogs in the home ! — Simple enough ! Get the folks up 
into the hills ; let them see new lands ; let them feel the 
touch of the eternal morning; let them forget the sor- 
did cares and, in recreation and rest, even but for a 
day, restore the sunshine to the home; set the waves 
of love and companionship into motion ; make a sparkle 
to the floor of life and clear the atmosphere of mists 
and misunderstanding, so that you can see more clear- 
ly, than before, the lovelight in each other's eyes. The 
weary wife, the petulant children, the tired husband! 
Fogs ! fogs ! all around the home ! Let in the northwest 
wind. Change the currents of thought and feeling. 
Love is the last thing to pass in vthe mist — its eyes 
shining bright. It will be the first thing to return, 
when the mists have blown away in the northwest 
wind. 

And then all your harbored fleets can set out with 
a following breeze. New cargoes, of all sorts, ambi- 
tions, faiths, hopes, courage, consideration, forgive- 
ness, sacrifice, patience, peace, and all with a song on 
the lips just as the sailors sing of a clear morning out 
of port bound for new havens beyond the headlands. 




ON "THOUGHTS ON THE HEN" 

AVING spent a portion of the day recently 
waiting for the arrival of a dumfingle for the 
carborundum of a Ford car, held in meticu- 
lous suspension in a farmer's dooryard, I had 
an opportunity to study the way of the hen; 
and she is in the way most of the time. 
The hen seems to me to lack purpose. She has 
neither the definite nor determined aim that she should 
have, to be made into a text. The rooster has a rather 
better aim than the hen, but even the rooster lacks the 
art of going in a straight line. He side-steps and 
scratches gravel and sidles up and shows off a whole lot 
— like some people — ^before he arrives. The hen 
makes no pretence of knowing where she is going ; and 
hence is less subtle. She is plainly without steering 
apparatus, either mental or moral. 

There was a very handsome hen over beyond our 
weary Ford, which traveled around in a semi-circle. If 
this hen started for the water-bucket over by the barn, 
she took a course directly away from the bucket and 
finally arrived there by running across the road to es- 
cape two automobiles that almost ran over her. She 
then returned to the yard, reached the water by a trip 
around the barn, when all the while the straight course 
would have been devoid of danger and obviously nearer. 
Some folks are like that. 

I noticed that a hen looks up to the sky every time 
it takes a drink. It is fair to assume that she is thank- 
ing God for the drink. After the prohibition amend- 
ment is passed by the nation, it is fair to assume also 
that men will be doing the same. If one hen decides to 
tackle the water-bucket, all of the rest of the hens feel 
convivial. You do not often see one hen, drinking 
alone. Some folks are also like that. Hens are taken 
with sudden and, to me, inexplicable attacks of panic. 



38 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

For instance, waves of unrest pass thru a flock of hens. 
I lay there on the ground, very quietly. No hawk was 
in the sky; no hawkers on the premises. But every 
now and then the hens would huddle ; a sort of tremor 
would pass thru them. They would cackle and screarti 
and run about and then quiet would be resumed. 
What was it? Can it be true that souls of politicians 
are embodied in hens by the transmigration of the 
same, — the souls I mean, not the hens ? 

I have a notion that there exist whole-souls and 
half-portion souls and souls in side-dishes and yet 
smaller — like twenty-cent ice-creams and fifteen-cent- 
ers and cones — for five cents each. Hens have small 
souls, I fully believe. Yet they do seem to me to have 
human suggestion about them. They act a good deal 
like people, but in a lesser way. For instance, I have 
1 >ticed that hens strut when looked at intently — just 
like a girl with new silk hose. They preen and cluck 
and plume themselves in society. Cats do the same. 
A cat is almost as vain as a rooster with a red comb. 
There was one rooster in the yard that did not do a 
thing but prance around and lift his legs high and 
make a noise. He was prounder than a new Major in 
his first uniform. 

Hens lack will-power except in laying eggs. I know 
nothing as a matter of fact about the chief function of 
a hen, but in practical things such as scratching a hole 
in the ground, the hen has neither will to do, nor power 
to persevere. She quits and runs hence. Her cackle 
is a desultory thing. It has certain musical notes in 
the alto, but all of them go to show that they are mere- 
ly the residue of inattention to what was once a noble 
organ. Indeed the name "hen" is derived from 
"canere," to sing. She was once a singer — he, a chant- 
i-cleer ; notice the first syllable "chant." 

The Moral of this is simple: no bird or beast or 
human that runs around in circles and refuses to lay 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 39 

eggs or do work or give himself over to useful employ- 
ment except when eggs, et cetera, are high, can expect 
anything else but deterioration ! He is bound to degen- 
eracy. He should go hens. 



ON "FURNACES" 

HEN I get to thinking about hell philosophi- 
cally, and want to feel my subject, I go down 
cellar and look at the furnace. With me it 
is a matter of temperament rather than tem- 
perature. The furnace looks like hell — or 
the way I have fancied hell might look — and 
it is dark and suggestive of coal-bills. And it squats 
on the floor, saturnine, mysterious. 

Furnaces were invented a good many years ago, if 
we may believe the Old Testament. Three men walked 
thru a fiery furnace, according to Daniel, and came 
out unscathed. Any one could have done that in my 
furnace last winter, with the kind of coal the Fuel Ad- 
ministration was doling out and the local coal-dealers 
were hilariously selling at $12 a ton. The three men 
were Jews — Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. They 
probably knew that the coal was the heatless variety, 
dug especially for the year of the Great War, 1918, 
Anno Domino. You could not fool one of those lads 
on fuel. And the Lord was on their side and against 
Nebuchadnezzar and his furnace. 

There are but two seasons for most men — when the 
furnace is going, and when it is not. In the latter he 
is a care-free, rollicking blade. In the other he is 
chained to the monster that sucks his heart-blood and 
keeps him in nights and Sundays. No man running a 
furnace is a free man. If the Kaiser would promise 
his soldiers that if they won the war he would see that 



40 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

all of their furnaces were run free for them forever 
after — why there would be nothing to it. Those Huns 
would leap to it and do or die. Not even a German 
likes to run a furnace. As it now is most of them 
rather be licked than go back and run a German fur- 
nace. 

This is the season of the year when manufacturers 
advertise furnaces. Every kind that is advertised cuts 
the coal bill of any other kind of a furnace square in 
two. Take a pencil and paper and you can figure how, 
by buying two furnaces, you can get along without any 
coal, and by buying four furnaces, you can lay up 
enough coal to be able to start in the coal-business and 
thus get to be a millionaire in a single winter. Then 
there is a sort of furnace, in the advertisements, that 
runs itself. It requires no shaking down ; it starts itself 
in the morning with a push-button and a thermo- 
stat. You can even start it by having an alarm clock 
by the head of your bed which will not only start the 
furnace but will also pull the bed clothes up around you 
a little closer and give the baby his bottle at the same 
time. One of these super-furnaces will also carry out 
the ashes ; shovel off the walks ; take in the milk ; boil 
your morning egg ; and talk back to your wife. It will 
not pay for the coal ; but as it does not burn any coal, 
you do well not to ask the impossible of a mere mechan- 
ical contrivance. There are limits even to the capacity 
of a super-furnace. If it will saw and split the wood; 
lug it in ; build its own fires ; heat the wash-water ; keep 
the house at seventy, or rather sixty-eight (conf. Local 
Fuel Adm'r) and guarantee that the cook won't quit, 
it is doing enough. 

But most of us have to get along with the old-fash- 
ioned, common variety of furnace. It enjoys work 
best in warm weather. Give it a nice, warm, summer- 
like winter day and it will produce heat enough to 
warm the State Capitol at Augusta. You can't keep it 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 41 

back. If you decline to give it coal, it goes out and 
gets it. But on a heavy day of cold, it will not work 
unless on time-and-a-half and double-time holidays and 
it could not heat a spare bunk in a ten-cent lodging 
house. 

To return to my first thought — if any. It seems 
odd that from the beginning of time, they have de- 
picted the future state of punishment as a spell of 
eternal tending of furnaces. Jonathan Edwards, who 
had some gifts, as a pessimist, regarding the comforts 
of hell, generally suggested that it would be a long job 
of shoveling. 

There is only one thing, however, that the eminent 
colonial preacher left out. He might have added "and 
you will have to pay for your own coal." If he had 
said that — well, there would have been no original sin 
in the U. S. A. 



ON "HATS, HERE AND THERE" 

FTER Adam and Eve were driven out of the 
Garden of Eden and Eve took to dressmak- 
ing, nothing much was doing in millinery un- 
til the time of Sodom and Gomorrah. The 
first hatters and milliners set up in Sodom 
and then moved over the bridge to Gomorrah. 
Now, everyone wears a hat. And Lot's wife is as 
fresh as ever in a new bunnit. 

One time I sold a hat to an old-clothes man at col- 
lege. After I came up here to work, I saw the hat in 
a second-hand store run by S. Record. It was mixed 
up with a lot of old army pistols. I bought it and have 
it now. It is of no value except to inspire memories. 
We used to have hats that lasted, when we were boys. 
A boy's hat went thru the whole family, just as dad's 




42 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

trousers did, and at the close they seemed as strong, 
if not stronger, than when they started out on their 
career of usefulness. You have seen them — old-timer 
— ^those boyhood hats that hung in the schoolhouse 
entry — changed by the sun, warped by the rains, but 
undying yet. They might fade but they never sur- 
rendered. Mixed in with the girl's sunbonnet — old- 
fashioned Shaker bonnets — they looked like yaller dogs 
troubled with the mange. Now and then they became 
elongated to peaks. Set one of these jauntily on the 
head of a red-headed, freckled-faced boy, wearing a 
gingham shirt and huckabuck trousers, and you had a 
thing of beauty as unlike the modem boy as a Packard 
automobile differs from father's carryall. 

The old-fashioned boy never had a complete outfit. 
If he got a suit of clothes from the village tailoress, he 
did not get a pair of new boots. Or if, by dire neces- 
sity, he got a pair of new boots he did not get a new 
hat. Never! He simply wore the new fixings and 
punctuated the awful condition of his hat. I have 
gone bareheaded to church many a time, flourishing 
my old hat with an aspect of hilarity that I did not feel, 
and banging the fence-posts with it, trying to wear it 
out. But it could not be done. Those old-time lids 
were "genuwine." Even an old-fashioned straw hat 
could be run thru the mowing machine and chewed up 
by the bull and yet be "good enough to wear again." 

No person should buy a hat for another person. 
And yet no woman should buy her own hat. This 
seems foolish and contradictory — yet it works out that 
way. In my opinion, a War Board should be appointed 
to buy women's hats. No woman should invest in a 
hat until it has been passed on by the Shipping Board, 
the Fuel Administrator and the Army and Navy; 
looked over by Josephus Daniels and tried on by Wood- 
row Wilson. What we want in women's hats is to 
make the hat fit the woman. Up to now women have 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 43 

been buying hats because they were inherently "love- 
ly," "darling," "wonderful," as they sit there on a pole, 
in the milliner's window. The woman never asks "Does 
the hat look well on me?" All she asks for is thirty 
dollars' worth of raiment, more gorgeous than the 
lilies, more brilliant than the sunset. Personally, she 
may have a face like a fried egg — ^the hat's the thing. 
Homely women ought to buy plain hats — and vice 
versa. Mother used to buy hats — ^hold there! — did 
she? No! She used to make them. Poor dear! I 
can see her now, digging each spring among her treas- 
ures for a spring bunnit. One plume a year and lo ! a 
new bonnet for the dear old head. And bonnet strings 
tied under the chin. Guess they never will get a style 
to beat it. When she went to church of a Sunday in 
May, in her new creation, and Dad had dug out his old 
tall hat and brushed it with a currycomb and donned 
his tricot coat and broadcloth vest and pants and put 
on a blue necktie — well, well, well. Oh Boy, and then 
plus. 

The general conception of Heaven seems to be that 
we do not wear hats there. They will interfere with 
flying and the action of the wings. I shall be sorry. 
I don't know what I shall do to take up my spare time — 
no hunting for my hat. But, you see, it would be im- 
possible to have hats in heaven — ^much as the ladies 
will miss them. Fancy Joan of Arc in a sailor hat ; or 
Socrates in a plug hat; or George Washington in a 
plaid cap. So, we must do all our "hatting" here. 
For the elect, no lids in the next world ; and a cast-iron 
one for the Kaiser with light asbestos for Sundays. 
So let us indulge ourselves here ! Off with the lid ! 




ON "PLAYING THE GAME" 

OME on — ^be a good scout! It costs nothing; 
pays dividends; eases up on the friction of 
the world and fits you for heaven. 

It is hard for some people to be pleasant. 
We have to pity them. They may have rea- 
sons for not being gentle and kindly and 
happy. They may have corns on their livers ; or warts 
on their spleens. Perhaps they make more bile than 
their circulatory organs can deliver. But there never 
was one of them who could not, if he really wanted to 
do so, become a tractable and decent companion. 
Many of them succeed in going along in an apparently 
joyous way, when they feel otherwise. 

All honor to these heroes. It is the chap who has 
been soured by some personal calamity and who goes 
into a hermitage of the soul and senses; who crawls 
into an iron-clad tank and spouts flame at all creation, 
that we feel ought to be reached. He ought to know 
that nothing can have happened to him that has not 
happened to others in former days. Listen to what 
Euripides wrote, over two thousand years ago: 
"Naught else to us hath yet been dealt, but that which 
daily, men have felt." Suppose that a great calamity 
befell you. It is not necessary to be specific, in illus- 
tration, but let us say that it is something real, vital ! 
Consider! It is just what has happened to others. 
Be a good scout ! Take it like a man ! 

Here is a true story about a remarkable man who 
died recently in Auburn. He was a master-mind. His 
position in our social, intellectual and political order 
was high. He had the keenest, straightest-thinking 
brain that could possibly be given to man. He was at 
the apex of, a lifetime of hard work — ^just when he had 
a right to enjoy the rewards of patient study, the 
accumulated lore of law and practice. He went to a 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 45 

specialist one day to find out what was the cause of his 
illness. He received his death-warrant. He had a 
hopeless case of cancer. He might live a year, or two. 
He came home and went to work. 

And then ensued a peculiar case of loving fortitude. 
He kept his hopelessness from his family. Never a 
word said he. A smile on his face, a laugh on his lips, 
a patient going about his work as long as strength 
lasted and then a final illness in which he professed a 
persistent hope of recovery to the end. And that is 
not all. Certain members of his family knew the sit- 
uation also. Nothing was said about it. The wife 
was the only one who was unaware of the fatality of 
the disease and two years of such comfort as hope 
could give her were the reward of this family — each 
keeping the supposed secret from the other — ^the son 
believing that the father was uninformed of the nature 
of the disease — the father believing that the son did 
not know. And so this group, maintaining an outward 
cheer, went on to the end. You cannot beat it in all of 
the stories of heroism. 

So I say to others — whatever happens, you can 
always play the game to the end. You can always be 
considerate. Nothing has happened to you that hath 
not happened to others. Play the game! Tune up! 
Be a "good scout." 




ON "THE POET AND THE APPLE BLOSSOM" 

ATURE is rather inclined to boast a bit in the 
spring — don't you think so? Some of the 
ugliest things delight in dressing up so that 
they are infinitely beautiful, as if to say: 
"We could be beautiful always, but we prefer 
to be useful." Beauty is religion in nature. 
About every animate thing in the vegetable world goes 
to church at least once in a year — a sort of Easter con- 
fessional. 

I am thinking now about something that I consider 
the loveliest thing in the world. Fifty weeks in the 
year it is scraggy, rough, sprawling, gnarled and alto- 
gether homely. Two weeks or so in the year it gives 
itself up to its raiment. And then how it is adorned! 
It may appear, in a single night, to have put on its new 
attire, and, lo! it is one with the mother-of-pearl, the 
diamond glints, and the fluff of the angels' wings that 
we esteem may be the popular tints in Heaven. 

We are even now upon the eve of the translation! 
It will be here soon — ^the most wonderful apocalypse. 
I am looking for it every morning from my window. 
It is the blossoming of the apple-orchards. 

You, perhaps, take it for granted. All right. Go 
your way, stranger. But you really have no right to 
expect quite so much. For, where is there anything 
else in the world so beautiful as a Maine apple-orchard 
in full bloom ? People go across the sea to be in Japan 
in cherry-blossom time. It is not so lovely as apple- 
blossom time in Maine. Wonder is that there are not 
already processions of poets on their way here to 
Maine, singing odes as they march and waving banners 
with iambics on them. 

A proper poet — literary poet, I mean — one who 
really prints his verses, could get a lot out of a week 
under an apple tree. Of course the every day poet — 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 47 

the one who only thinks his poetry and does not bother 
to write it, a much happier way for everybody — does 
get his dividends any way out of the apple-blossom 
time. He is usually very practical and owns apple- 
trees. He likes to see how they bud and how they 
blossom and how they fruit in the fall. But the Poet 
— purely literary — tho he has written of apple-blos- 
soms, maybe has never seen one. Come over to Maine 
and lie down a week and look up thru the heaven- 
starred branches of the apple tree and see God. Come 
over to Maine and get a sniff or two of the perfume 
from a Maine hillside. Come over to Maine and learn 
the ways of the apple-blossom and the bee and the 
trout. 

Did you know, for instance, O Poet ! that it is not 
of much use to try to lure the big fish from the trout- 
inhabited lakes of Maine until the apple-blossom is on 
the tree. I knew a Maine fisherman, one of the best, 
who never wet a line until the trees in his own orchard 
were bouquets of glory. The fish know — you see! 
The fish have a habit of reviving from their winter 
sleep along about the time that the apple-tree puts 
forth her color. Nothing strange about it. Facts are, 
as a rule, the strangest things we know. Come on, 
then. Poet, and fish and think and think and fish and 
smell the sweets of heavenly things and see the rai- 
ment of the Lord cast down on the apple tree for an 
airing once a year. The Cherubims are wearing about 
all the old colors, as usual. 

Old chaps can come back and be sentimental, in 
apple-blossom time. Perhaps, if they were born in 
Maine, they have certain memories about this time. 
An evening lamp, a low window, a woman sitting mend- 
ing by the table, brothers and sisters studying lessons, 
in short the old, old home and the faint odor of apple- 
blossoms coming up out of the orchard. Every time 
you have smelled it since then — these fifty years, you 




48 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

see the mother by the lamp, you think of old dad. You 
think of the lilacs, the old red lilacs up against the par- 
lor window, and their perfume. I don't know where 
else over the old farm your memories may wander. I 
surely am not going to get sentimental over it. 

But — hear me — there is a lot to this "apple-blos- 
som" stuff. 



ON "SHADOW AND SUBSTANCE" 

N ^SOP'S Fables you will find the following: 
A Traveler hired an Ass to convey him to a 
distant place. The day being intensely hot 
and the sun shining in its strength, the trav- 
eler stopped to rest and sought shelter from 
the heat under the Shadow of the Ass. As 
this afforded protection for but one and as the traveler 
and the owner of the Ass both claimed it, a violent dis- 
pute arose between them as to which had the right to 
it. The owner maintained that he had let the Ass only 
and not the Shadow. The traveler maintained that 
with the hire of the Ass, he had hired his Shadow also. 
The quarrel proceeded from words to blows and while 
the men fought, the Ass galloped off. 

Moral: In quarreling about the Shadow, we often 
lose the Substance. 

Of course! If you never quarreled, the Fable has 
no significance to you, but if you have ever had a fight 
with another man or woman about something that did 
not amount to a row of pins, iS^sop says something. 

I saw a man and a woman a few months ago in the 
divorce court. There did not seem to be much of any- 
thing the trouble — too much "personality" — some call 
it "temperament;" better called "egoism." Also thru 
the crack of the door, the court could see the sharp 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 49 

nose of a sniffy mother-in-law. There are such crit- 
ters — alas! Well — they were nice looking young peo- 
ple ; too sensible to be fighting over his right to sit up 
nights and read when she thought he ought to be kiss- 
ing her under the left ear. Too sensible to be fighting 
over her liking to go out and see the movies now and 
then, when he thought she had not a ghost of a right 
to spend money for such purposes. I could see the 
Ass's ears, crowned with orange blossoms, and sur- 
rounded by dancing cupids — if only the two little fools 
would kiss and make up and recall the fact that he is 
an entity apart from her, and she is an entity apart 
from him, and that each has certain rights to pursuit 
of harmless happiness. But alas! The Uncrowned 
Ass! It galloped away via the divorce court, taking 
with it what substance? — Two broken lives; the hope 
and happiness of two little children whom they had 
brought into the world and who have a right to the love 
of a mother and the counsel of a father. 

You may recall instances where partners in busi- 
ness have not been able to agree over which was the 
boss. The business was prosperous and profitable. 
They liquidated. There was a case once in Lewiston in 
a most profitable shoe-factory. It was their affair — 
not mine, but the other day one of them said to me, 
"If we hadn't differed over nothing we would have been 
taking those profits up to this hour, for we were a 
successful team." 

My friend, do not quarrel unless the fight is worth 
while. Fight for Right. Fight for Substance. Fight 
for the things that endure — chief of which is Justice 
to all men and women and children. But do not fight 
for the Shadow of a substance and see the substance 
gallop off while you are gouging and biting and rolling 
in the dirt. 




ON "FEATHER BEDS, ET CETERA" 

UR Maine News Editor came over to my desk 
the other day and said: "They are having a 
law-suit up in northern Maine, over the own- 
ership of a feather-bed. Why don't you con- 
verse with your readers on the feather-bed?" 
And she said it just as tho it were some- 
thing soft. 

Until this happened, we had supposed that the 
feather-bed was extinct, like the dodo and the great 
auk. We did not know that one was left in captivity. 
They used to be numerous and considered valuable. A 
newly-married couple could set up housekeeping with 
a feather-bed and a watch-dog. Do you recall the ap- 
pearance of Aylward the Archer in Conan Doyle's 
"White Company" coming back from Flanders and the 
wars, bearing his richest spoil, a feather-bed, two 
varlets carrying it ? 

I have slept on a feather-bed in summer in the hot 
attic of a story and a half country farm-house, after a 
day when the thermometer had been 95 degrees in the 
shade, one window in the room and that about as big 
as the seat of my pants, crickets chirruping "more 
heat" outside, corn growing so that you could hear it, 
distant bull-frogs droning, and myself snugly and cosi- 
ly ensconsed in a feather-bed that kept crawling up 
around me with its hot hands and enveloping my sys- 
tem. I believe that after a youth devoted to such hot 
times in the old town, a man is proof against dissipa- 
tion in this world and the next. Sure thing, he knows 
what heat is ! 

Under the feather-bed was a bed made of corn- 
husks. Everything right off the farm, as it were! 
And under that was a corded bed. Did you ever cord 
up a bed ? There is some fun you have missed ! You 
must be a man or else a farmerette, to do it modestly. 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 51 

The cord runs from side to side and then longitudinally, 
making neat little squares, thru which you penetrate 
your legs and tighten the cord. Then you have a mal- 
let and a wooden bed-pin which latter you drive into 
the holes in the side of the bed to hold the bed-cord 
preparatory to tightening it. Then the bed falls down. 
It always did and it always would. The proper way to 
tighten a bed was to walk down in the cross-cords and 
pull up the longitudinal cords. And if you were smart 
and strong, you could lift yourself by your own bed- 
cord. If there was anything I would rather not do as a 
boy, it was to cord up a bed. There was only one thing 
that had it tied to the spare tire and that was changing 
the tick on a feather-bed. 

That was annual. You could tell when the neigh- 
bors were doing it in the spring by the flight of feath- 
ers. They would settle miles away and, as they came 
floating down, mother would pick one up and say, "That 
is Mrs. Tyler's feathers. She is changing ticks. Son- 
ny, you get ready for tomorrow." I know of nothing 
more depressing than to shoulder a feather-bed — the 
goose-feathers or the hen's feathers of which has seg- 
regated in the southwest corner of the tick — bring it 
down stairs out of doors into the warm and unsanitary 
region back of the barn and proceed to change ticks by 
removing the feathers from one to another, meantime 
endeavoring to reanimate the feathers. You can do 
about so much in this world. But you can't put much 
pep into a discouraged hen's feather. I found that out 
when young and then and there declared that whatever 
business I adopted, it would not be that of feather- 
encourager. On a hot day, with feathers up your nose 
and tickling the back of your neck and sifting thru 
your kidneys and gall-bladder, it is not half as much 
fun as fishing on a good brook, under the shade of an 
old elm with the bobolinks singing their roundelays to 
your boyhood happiness. 



52 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

I have known good old couples who have slept all of 
their lives together on a feather-bed, over a husk-bed, 
over a corded bed. It was as unsanitary as drinking 
out of a water-tumbler. But they lived to old age. I 
don't know how they did it. Yes — I do. They had 
boys who corded up the bed and manicured the feath- 
ers. Some of the boys outlived it. They are now 
sleeping on something other than feather-beds. It 
only goes to show that some things may be endured if 
you can get others to do part of the enduring. And 
that's the philosophy of it. 



ON "STICKING TO THE JOB" 

WENT fishing last week at Kineo. It was a 
day of howling winds and storm-driven sky 
— ^just the kind of a day to seek the lee of the 
coast, to fish along the shore under the toss- 
ing, wind-lashed birches and to dine on shore 
by the open fire with the guides deftly laying 
the table and pouring the nectar that IS coffee. 

I had a Stanley spinner on my line. The guide 
favored a Cornwall spinner and all day long he be- 
moaned the fate that left us with no spinner to suit his 
fancy. "If I only had a Cornwall spinner." And yet 
I was catching fish. Furthermore, this guide was 
wishing we were in another place. "We ought to have 
gone down on the Toe of the Boot.' I never did like 
these Socatean waters." And so it was, all day long — 
the distant pastures always fairer to him. 

After I got home and began to think about the 
guide and began to summon my proverbial philosophy 
to fit the case, I ran across this story in a little booklet 
that came to my desk called "McK, and R., Drug 
Topics," which is written by a very clever person. It 
was under the caption, '"Oh, if I Only had the Other 
Fellow's Job," and was devoted to this idea — "Why 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 53 

shift? Before you change be sure you are doing all 
you can where you are." 

This was the story: 

Grover Cleveland, when he was President, went out 
fishing one day with Joe Jefferson and William H. 
Crane, the actors. 

After they had been out less than half an hour, 
without getting a nibble on their lines, Jefferson began 
to get restless and fidget about the boat. 

"Let's move over there," said the famous imperson- 
ator of "Rip Van Winkle," "I'm sure we'll find it better. 
There's nothing here." 

Cleveland said nothing — ^just went on fishing. 

"This is wasting time," Jefferson continued in a 
little while. "We've been here 45 minutes by the clock 
and not one of us has had a bite. The fish must all be 
over on the other side of the pond. We better move the 
boat." Cleveland looked up from his line and dryly 
replied : 

"Joe, when I was a small boy I went fishing with my 
Uncle Elihu, and I remember he told me that one 
of the secrets of success in life was to stick to the place 
where you'd thrown your anchor out. Too many 
folks,' said Uncle Elihu, *spend all their time pulling up 
their anchors and rowing around ; they don't catch the 
fish.* As for me, when I start in to fish, I sit right 
there and fish until either the pond runs dry or the 
horn blows for supper." 

Many people in all walks of life who are sure there 
are no fish where they are, are aching to move and cast 
anchor elsewhere — ^just the way Joe Jefferson did. He 
made a million dollars out of the stage, but always was 
sure there was nothing in it. He wanted to be a paint- 
er. Comedians always want to be tragedians and 
vice-versa. They want to move on and fish elsewhere. 

Same with lots of men in trades and business. 
They want the other fellow's job. The other fellow's 



54 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 



job ! — How about your own? — Are you making the firm 
stand up on its hind legs and notice you? Are you 
putting so much pep into it that it can't do without 
you ? Have you sewed it up tight ? Have you cleaned 
up the pool until there is nothing left in it for you? 
If you have — move on; but if all you are doing is be- 
moaning fairer pastures and deeper pools "over there ;" 
if all you do is act surly, complain that you are misun- 
derstood; dawdling around and idling on the fish-pole, 
why — perhaps you better drop overboard. Nobody 
will miss you. If you are going to talk like a fish and 
act like a fish — ^better be a fish. The world is full of 
examples of success made by sticking to the job. The 
world is full of failures of men of marked intelligence 
who have roamed afar looking for better fishing 
"around the 'Toe of the Boot.' " If you are fishing the 
pool — ^fish it out. 




ON "THE BATH-TUB" 

HE Bath-tub is an oval receptacle for the 
human body. It is about two feet deep and 
about twelve inches too short. It comes in 
several varieties from the sitz to the "snitz." 
The latter is a kind of bath-tub that you look 
at but do not wet. 
A bath-room with a bath-tub in it is a good thing 
to have in the house even if you have no use for it — 
because it gives you something to talk about. Some 
years ago, people would speak of the bath-tub in that 
casual, deprecatory way in which one nowadays speaks 
of his automobile, a sort of ticket, admitting one to the 
circle of the first-families. To say "I was in the bath- 
tub when you rung the door-bell," was much like say- 
ing, "The winter I was in the Legislater," or "the year 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 55 

I was in Europe." It gave you a certain standing. It 
put your unwashed friend at a disadvantage. He could 
not expect to have the polish — ablutionary or other- 
wise — that you have when he practiced merely sec- 
tional and non-contemporaneous application of soap and 
water. There was no special distinction coming to him 
in society in those days, if all he could drag into the 
social chat was some such remark as this: "I was 
a'washing myself back of the ears when you was 
a-callin' for me." But if he could mention an "alto- 
gether," in a stationary bath-tub ! Oh, Boy ! 

Perhaps you notice that I use the words "stationary 
bath-tubs." I do so with design. In olden days, one 
bathed in a tub which was neither stationary nor ex- 
clusive. Mother soaked the clothes in it Sundays; 
banged the washboard over it on Mondays ; hulled corn 
in it Tuesdays; scoured it out Wednesdays and began 
to wash the boys and girls in it Thursdays, Fridays and 
Saturdays. It was a blue tub painted white inside. 
After it had seen use, it frequently developed splinters. 
I mention the fact because I remember it. I have some 
of them now, in my system, I think. We usually 
bathed in the kitchen; but often in the barn, or the 
pantry, or the parlor, or the dining room. One day in 
March it happened in the dining room. Mother was 
bending over me with a scrubbing-brush and a yellow 
pitcher full of soft soap and I was sitting on a splinter, 
when the schoolmarm butted in and asked mother why 
I was absent from school the previous day. It was 
referred to me and I had no ready answer. If you ever 
got a moist-licking in a wash-tub in the month of 
March, for playing hookey, you will know why I yet 
remember the incident. It is my recollection that 
in those days most of the "altogether" bathing was 
done in the spring and summer. It was difficult to bust 
the ice in the wash-tub after Thanksgiving day. So 
we generally confined our ablutions to a reasonable 



56 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

reach below the collar button and waited patiently for 
spring. 

Adam Thompson of Cincinnati, Ohio, was the first 
man in America to put a bath-tub with running water 
into his house, and practice winter-bathing. This was 
Dec. 20th, 1842. It aroused a nation to controversy. 
The medical profession, with its usual foresight, de- 
clared it a dangerous thing and bound to increase the 
prevalence of zymotic diseases. Society frowned on 
mid-winter bathing. Finally, Millard Fillmore, Presi- 
dent of the United States, put a bath-tub into the 
White House, in 1851. That settled it. Society took 
it up and began to brag about bathing on other days 
than Saturday night. A New York hotel put in a 
bath-tub. People went far to see it. Royal Dukes 
were taken around to see it on their visits to America. 
It was not uncommon for some untitled person to be 
using it and compelled to dive under water while it was 
inspected by a Duke or maybe a common Earl. 

There is much more I could say. But I refrain. 
While the Huns bathe in blood let us bathe in water. 
Bath-tubs are but the beginning. For the day will 
come when sumptuous public baths will be maintained 
by every town of 20,000 inhabitants and when it will 
be fit cause for indictment for neglect or refusal by 
any municipality to comply with this law. Then, per- 
haps, we shall be clean — and Godly. 




ON "CLOTHES" 

E ALL know something about clothes. Every- 
one has used them — except Adam and Eve — 
and even they had a definite, if limited 
knowledge of their uses. 

When I was a boy, we had no children's 
stores. Your mother — old chap — used to cut 
your hair and your clothes. You can see some of 
mother's hair-cuts of sixty years ago — eight inches of 
hair chopped off at the coat collar and a lambrequin 
underneath. You used to whisper across the aisle in 
school, "Mother cut yer hair 'round a sugar-bowl!" 
And then someone got licked at recess. 

Same way with clothes. Mother used to lay you 
down on the kitchen floor and mark a pattern of you 
out in chalk. And then she used to take a suit of 
clothes formerly belonging to some remote adult ances- 
tor and of entirely different architecture and carve you 
a suit. We used to wear pants that had been what we 
called "razeed." They were shortened in the legs and 
reduced in the dome. As a result the pockets came 
down so far that a small boy had to double up to find 
his jackknife. I can recall the appearance of a boy in 
a pair of his grandfather's razeed trousers, with barn- 
door front. That was going some. 

One good woman in my neighborhood used to put 
gores in her boy's pants fore and aft. Thus she got 
double wear, for he had to turn and turn about in 
those pants every other day so that they would last 
longer. Seats of pants were the most vulnerable por- 
tions in boyhood ! I had a pair of pants once made out 
of mother's beaver cloak. They were nice pants but 
not very natty. The goods was very durable — ^being 
about half an inch thick. The finest thing about those 
pants was that they would stand alone. I could take 
them off — the cute little things — at night and they 



58 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

would have done nicely for a double-barreled umbrella 
rack. When I first wore them to school the teacher 
kept telling me to please sit down in my seat and not 
half down. "Please marm," says I, "I can't sit down 
no farther, my pants is too stiff and thick." 

I heard Simeon Ford speak once about clothes and 
he said that he once went to school in a suit carved out 
of his uncle's army overcoat. He entered the school 
with misgivings and was received with enthusiasm 
Remarks were made calculated to wound his feelings. 
In order to provide for his confirmed habit of growing, 
tucks had been let into the pants front and back, so 
that the effect was more striking and bizarre than 
fashionable. It was common talk at that time that 
army cloth was all shoddy and no good to wear. The 
gossip was unfounded. The clothes wore like iron. 
He spent hours sliding down cellar doors and over the 
rocks but the hateful army overcoat would not wear 
out. Finally he got mad and outgrew it and it was 
passed on to some younger relative and probably some 
poor wretch is wearing it yet. 

Of course, if we men could have our way, we would 
all be wearing kilts. They seem thrifty and cheap. 
I can think of some men in Lewiston and Auburn that 
I would as soon see in kilts as to wear 'em myself. If 
we could save enough on kilts we might buy our wives 
at least two hats a year more — and really all a woman 
needs, nowadays, is a pair of high boots, a few other 
things and a hat a week. But I am glad that it is so. 
Fashion is a fine thing. It makes markets and it 
troubles tight- wads. There never was an age meaner 
than that age when the old gent made your boots, 
mother made your pants and big sister chopped off 
your loose hair. It was mortifying. It spoiled a boy's 
pride. It kept his mind off his lessons. It was need- 
less and ill-advised economy, in restraint of trade. You 
can't get business, unless you DO business ! 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 59 

It is just the same in life. It is mighty hard for a 
man to show up well in a formal assembly when he has 
a patch on the seat of his pants of a different color of 
goods. He can't make his way very well in society 
without a dress-suit. Once all we needed was a paper 
collar and a linen suit. Today good clothes, neat 
clothes, are absolutely essential. It was a shame — ^the 
way they used to dress girls and boys. Just as much 
a shame as it is to over-dress them, as some people are 
doing today. 



ON "HELL" 

0, DEAR friend ! This is not to be a discussion 
of "hell" the expletive but of "hell" as a loca- 
tion. 

There is a popular revival of Hell as a fu- 
ture abode for Germans, There seems to be 
no other punishment to fit the crime. If 
there is not a Hell for Huns, what sort of a bogie man 
is going to get them. Yes ! WE have plenty of room 
in our philosophy and religion, for some kind of a 
super-steam and poison gas hell especially built for the 
Pagan tribe of women-killers and murderers of the sick 
and helpless, that inhabit and fester the earth around 
Potsdam. 

There is no history of Hell at hand. Its beginnings 
go back to the dawn of the human race. It seems to 
have been preached very strongly very early in the 
ministry. St. Thomas Aquinas, who was a rather dog- 
matic chap, about seven hundred years ago, informed a 
world that doubtless needed the information, that the 
redeemed in Heaven could look out and see the damned 
in Hell and have no sort of pity for their tortures. 
Somehow, today, there is a sort of comfort in that doc- 
trine as applied to the folks that crucify captives and 




60 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

shoot nurses. The early fathers of the church used 
these things on wicked people and perhaps did a lot of 
restraining work with them. 

Now a few facts about hell. St. Bonaventura says 
that any human conception of hell is heaven compared 
to what hell really is. Now there is some power in old 
St. Bonaventura, is there not? He says that the 
damned are packed in at the rate of 100,000,000 to a 
German square mile. You notice that he says "Ger- 
man." Jerome and Tertullian say that the popular 
bath in hell is probably hot sulphur and burning pitch. 
Gulielanus Pariensis, an old ecclesiastic, says that ac- 
cording to his computation, there are 44,435,556 devils 
alone, but other authorities say that there must be a 
great many more to do the work of efficient and com- 
plete torture required. Jonathan Edwards said in 
1741 at Enfield, Ct., that the bigger part of men 
that had died hitherto had undoubtedly gone to hell. 
Some idea of the population of hell may be gained by 
the statement of Dr. Louis de Moulin of the University 
of Oxford in 1680 that the population of hell increased 
at the rate of 15,768,000 a year. 

There is some question about the location of hell. 
It has been located at the poles, at the antipodes, in the 
centre of the earth, in Mars, in the moon, in the sea. 
Tertullian and Dante placed it in the centre of the 
earth. This seems to be the popular location. Every 
time we see a volcano we think of hell and it makes us 
sad to think how its choice society up to the year 1914 
has been partially and is to be completely ruined by an 
influx of undesirable, low-lived Huns. The absence of 
air, and the small size of the earth's centre indicating 
a scarcity of room, have driven the theologians to look 
to the sun as a fit place. So there we leave it. As to 
the shape of, hell — it is universally agreed to be cir- 
cular. No corners for escape. It is no place for 
plumbers, for there is no running water. Perhaps, 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 61 

however, they might be useful in looking after the 
liquid fire. Possibly this vigorous element may sup- 
plant cold water in the domestic appliances of the 
Gehenna bath rooms, etc. 

These are all of the actual facts I have been able 
to gather about Hell. It has undoubtedly outgrown 
the centre of the earth; is located in the sun; has a 
large population and is banking the fires and cleaning 
house for more. Personally, I do think that there never 
was a time when some sort of a reasonable sort of 
hell ought to be preached more resolutely than now. I 
don't mean to be cruel about it, but there is altogether 
too little said about the next world to keep some Prot- 
estants straight. They need a word of warning now 
and then about Hell. Make it to suit yourself — ^the 
size, location, temperature, sanitation, etc., but for the 
sake of a heaven here and hereafter, don't forget to 
preach that the wages of sin are death and that as ye 
sow, so shall ye reap. 



ON "GETTING THERE BY PERSEVERING" 




E HAD word in this office the other day that 
Ralph Skinner who was once a reporter in 
this office — and that not so long ago — is now 
a Captain in the regular army of the U. S., 
stationed near San Francisco. 

Here is an example of what perseverance 
and pluck will do. Never was there a boy who seemed 
to have a harder prospect before him than Skinner had 
three years ago. He came here to work in this office 
when he hadn't a chance in the world. He had a cer- 
tain facility in writing but no capacity to speak of as a 
reporter. He tried and tried, and never gave up, but 
the way was long and weary. Once he quit and went 



62 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

to farming. He made a complete and utter failure and 
celebrated it in a story of flashes of facetious nature — 
one of those stories that could not be printed because it 
was too prolix but which showed ability of high order. 

To help out his work in the newspaper and heighten 
his usefulness he joined the National Guard. His sole 
purpose was to make good on the newspaper and to get 
at the sources of news of that class. He became a very 
good soldier. His fundamental characteristic was con- 
science. He was absolutely honest to himself and all 
of the world. Of all men, he was surpassed by none 
in his sense of absolute devotion to duty and to right. 
He was the sweetest, fairest, best of young men. But 
he was not built for advances in newspaper work. No 
one knew it better than he. 

Little by little he began to get ahead in the military 
way. Physically he developed. Mentally he grew. 
Finally I came across him one day studying French. I 
said nothing. Next I found him at work on plane Trig- 
onometry and working at logarithms. I asked him 
what was the idea. He said that he was going in for 
examination for Second Lieutenant in the Regular 
Army of the U. S., — a life profession if he landed it. 

How the lad studied! He was married by this 
time, and happily. This was a spur to him. He took 
an examination and failed. But he failed so that some- 
one was impressed by the material — the man in him. 
He was asked to come over and try it again. The of- 
ficers liked the Stuff in him. He tried and failed on a 
few studies. I don't know how many times he tried be- 
fore he conquered, step by step, the weary way of the 
night and day toil. But he got there ! 

When he went to the examinations, he expected to 
land in the Coast Artillery. An oificer who evidently 
liked him said, "Can you ride a horse?" "Sure," said 
Skinner. They led up the horse and Skinner crossed a 
leg over him. The horse ran away with him and he 
came near never getting back. 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 63 

"There's no question that you CAN ride," said the 
officer smilingly, "but it is plain that you don't know 
how, at present," Skinner learned. He became Sec- 
ond Lieutenant in the Cavalry ; First Lieutenant in the 
Cavalry. Now he is a Captain. 

A handsome chap ! A fine fellow. His only trouble 
has been his habit of introspection — looking at a sub- 
ject from too many angles to find out if he could do it 
according to conscience. He has now found out, I am 
told, how to decide quickly, intuitively, what is right 
and to do it. 

If there is a lesson in Capt. Skinner's life — the 
young man may find it. He will like it full as well as 
he will if I try to point it out for him. But it is there. 
It is a lesson of patience, courage, manliness, conscience 
and fearlessnes. 



ON "MAKING THE BEST OF THINGS" 

MAN named William McQuigg fell down the 
shaft of a mine and lay there three days. 
He was taken up alive but paralyzed from the 
waist down. He was taken to a hospital for 
incurables in Chicago and was there two 
years. He could use his head, hands and 
arms — especially his head. 

In some way, he realized $300 out of his past be- 
longings, as a miner, and when this had come to hand, 
he informed the hospital officials that he was about to 
leave them. No man with his brains was incurable, in 
the full sense of the term. He accordingly devised a 
small bed with wheels on which he could lie and which 
he could propel with his arms and hands. He was 
taken from the hospital .and set upon the streets to be- 
gin again the life of an active man. 




64 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

His first business move was to lease a store and 
start a small printing and stationery business. He did 
well. He attracted attention by his cheerfulness and 
optimism. They were his best stock-in-trade as they 
are any man's best business assets. He became fore- 
handed. He owned his automobile which was made 
especially for his needs, with a bed in it. In this he 
went everywhere, doing business and enjoying all that 
nature and the sight of man can combine to offer. 

He is now in Washington, D. C. — so Mr. F. H. 
Briggs of that city tells me — as an expert on matters 
pertaining to cripples. 

We have an example of the highest possible inspira- 
tion right here in Lewiston, of a young man who, in the 
fullness of his strength as a boy, was accidentally shot, 
damaging the spinal cord. He is doing business, 
cheerfully, with never a complaint, driving his own au- 
tomobile under physical conditions that in a less de- 
termined character might keep him bed-ridden, away 
from all that a man holds dear. One never sees him 
but with a prayer for his renewing strength and a 
blessing on him for his example. 

It's a big thing to make the best of things. Half a 
man is better than no man at all. A man's 
brain is ninety per cent, of his anatomy. He can get 
along without legs and arms and other minor organs if 
he has his dynamic brain going. It is hard to be crip- 
pled — but there are worse things. And the cheerful 
man, who shows to the world the aspect of a fellow- 
worker under adverse circumstances, is positively an 
inspiration. He shames the idler. It puts the rich 
man's dissipated and non-productive life into the dis- 
card of vain and wicked things when one contemplates 
this patient soldier of industry, toiling away, like Will- 
iam McQuigg, happy to do his share. 

We are soon going to see many a man, badly dam- 
aged from the war. They will be coming home blind- 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 65 

ed, without feet and hands, paralyzed and helpless. But 
not one of them as true soldiers will fail to make the 
best of it — to do something to keep a place in the ranks 
of workers. 

But how about the rest of us ? Are our belly-aches 
and our indispositions and our nervous prosperities, 
and our follies and our foibles to continue to make ex- 
cuses for laziness? 

Wake up! There's a new day abroad, in which 
every man shall work and work all over. And if he is 
short an arm or a leg or toe, what is left will wiggle on 
and there will be no such name as "crippled" or incur- 
able. 

Wake ! for the day calleth ! 



ON "THE OTHER NAME FOR SUCCESS' 




UDGE WING of Auburn was talking the other 
day about his beginning in law. He was 
admitted to the bar when he had been only 
two times in a supreme judicial court room, 
both times as a spectator. But he had long 
before decided to be a lawyer and had early 
been impressed with the dignity of the calling. 

He thought out his career, while he was working on 
the farm and while he was teaching school. The other 
day he was given an unusual honor — unique we think 
in the record of the bar, hereabout — a gathering of his 
appreciative fellow-attorneys at a dinner to celebrate 
the fiftieth anniversary of the admission of that seri- 
ous-minded boy to the practice of law. 

You would hunt far to find a more interesting ex- 
ample of what we call "thinking in terms of success" 
than the life of this eminent Maine attorney. He never 
quit doing just that. Everything he ever under- 



66 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

took, he carried thru, if it was possible for any man to 
carry it thru. Some people have not thoroly liked 
Judge Wing because of his "winning ways," but most 
of them have come to learn that if he was a good fight- 
er, he was a good forgetter and good forgiver. He 
won because he thought of everything in terms of win- 
ning. He never looked at anything in terms of pos- 
sible failure. That's why he is today, young, well- 
groomed, active, alive to public affairs. He never 
looked at life as anything but a success. 

The old philosophers all taught this very thing, 
"think success." Rousseau said it, Emerson preached 
it. Prentice Mulford reiterated it. We don't just 
know why it works out as it does. There is no special 
philosophy about it but it is surely one of those things 
that just works — that's all. You take a man like 
Judge Wing — all energy, all determination, all capacity 
and all brains and have him think success and — the 
next moment he is acting on the assumption and he 
gets there. 

No man is a success, however, solely on the side of 
material things. I doubt if any man knows this bet- 
ter than the man of whom I am writing. He has been 
in a lot of fights. He has rubbed a lot of persons the 
wrong way. He has been cordially hated. But he has 
been just as fondly loved by those who knew him. 
Fact is, he does many things by impulse and he hits 
hard, but when the battle is over he has the same sensi- 
tive and kindly aspect to fellow-man, the same willing- 
ness to take over the battles of the man who had been 
fighting him, in the first place. I know about this per- 
sonally. He has done a world of good by stealth. 

He's a rugged old Roman — as young as ever. He 
seemed to practice law easily; but it was because he 
knew how. He knew the law and he knew the routine 
and he "practiced." Lots of young lawyers do not 
"practice." You will have to go far in New England to 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 67 

find the other man, who has been more days in the 
court-room. He got his experience in work. 

Perhaps this is the other reason why "thinking suc- 
cess" spells "success." It is because its other name is 
"hard-work." 



ON "THE VOICE OF THE FROG" 




AM straining my ear to hear the first croak of 
the frog. Somehow, it rests me from the 
contemplation of this war, to think of some- 
thing sempiternal, like spring and signs of 
spring. The more you think of God and His 
works and the less you worry over German 
hellishness the better, I think. Think more, therefore, 
of spring, frogs and tortoises. 

I don't know much of Nature except in the senti- 
mental way. I did not know — until I looked it up — 
that the wood-tortoise is the Emys insculpta. I have 
heard him a little farther south in New England, after 
the mud of the freshets has dried on the fallen leaf in 
the swamp, as he moves, rustling in the leaves or 
tumbling over the bank. I don't know which birds 
come first, but some day I see a bird that I recognize 
as a fat rascal of a robin and I know him because my 
mother used to say "O, see the robin redbreast," and I 
said that same to my children. All the children that 
came to my house were as mine. I don't know which 
trees come into leaf first. I only know that there is a 
breath of something new and vital in the air, like a 
presage of God on earth and then there is glory in the 
filtered light thru foliage. All leaves are alike to me. 

But the frog is different. Every time I hear him 
first, I feel youth stir my blood in remembrance and 
visions of old places and old faces return to me. I see 



68 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

the old house and the old hill and the old frog-pond and 
the old bonfires blazing on the hill and the old row of 
bowls where we played duck and drake. I was pleased 
to know this day that someone else liked the frog in 
something the same way. 

That other one was Thoreau. Frogs held his con- 
trite admiration. "The same starry geometry looks 
down on their active and their torpid state," says he. 
"The little peeping hyla winds his shrill mellow min- 
iature flageolet in the warm, overflowed pools and sug- 
gests to him this stupendous image. 'It was like the 
light, reflected from the mountain ridges within the 
shaded portions of the moon, forerunner and herald of 
the spring.' " Thoreau made a regular business, study- 
ing the frogs — waded for them with freezing calves, in 
the early freshet, caught them and carried them home 
to hear their sage songs. "I paddle up the river to see 
the moonlight and hear the bull-frog," says he. About 
May 22, he hears the willowy music of the frog, and 
notices the pads on the river with often a scalloped 
edge like those tin platters on which the country peo- 
ple sometimes bake turnovers. He says of the wood- 
frog, Rana sylvatica, "It had four or five dusky bars 
which matched exactly when the legs were folded, 
showing that the painter applied his brush to the ani- 
mal when it was in that position." The leopard-frog, 
the marsh-frog, the bull-frog and best of all earthly 
singers, the toad he never could do enough for. It 
was, he says, a great discovery, when first he found that 
the ineffable trilling concerto of early summer after 
sunset was arranged by the toads — when the earth 
seemed fairly to stream with the sound. He thought 
that the yellow, swelling throat of the bull-frog came 
with the water-lilies. 

Is it not some satisfaction to think that toads and 
frogs will go on and on and on, singing — after the 
Hohenzollerns and such small fry are dead and gone? 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 69 

Is it not some comfort that flowers may spring up 
again in No Man's Land? Is it not pleasant to think 
that tho Rheims is gone — ^the elm tree can fling aloft a 
beauty never matched by cathedral spire ? 

Be of courage ! Spring will yet come into the heart 
of humankind ! 



ON "THE FAIR AVERAGE OF WICKEDNESS" 

WAS OUT on the Union Pacific, one time, some- 
where west of Omaha," said Charles S. Cum- 
mings of Auburn, "with no berth in the sleep- 
er. I happened by chance to meet a miner, 
whom I had seen a few days before, and he 
gave me half of his. The car was crowded; 
baggage in the aisles; children crying; women tired 
and fussy. My friend couldn't sleep, so he got up in 
the night and went to the smoking room for a whiff. 
He fell over baggage and had a hard trip. 

"In the morning he said to me, 'What is your busi- 
ness?' " 

" 'I am a clergyman,' said I. 

" 'My word,' said he, 'You must be shocked. I 
swore terribly, didn't I?' " 

" 'Yes,' said I, 'You did swear a lot when you fell 
down, but I prayed a lot while you swore, and thus kept 
up a fair average for both of us.' " 

I think that a good many people forget that the 
world runs by averages. It is hard to get one hundred 
per cent efficiency either in praying or swearing. It 
is fair to suppose that swearing has its uses, by way 
of emphasis and relief of nervous strain. Bad habit? 
Sure thing ! Unnecessary ? Sure thing ! Ought to be 
stopped? Sure thing! Let's condemn humanity for 
swearing, therefore; let's — let's thunder against it in 



70 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

the press; let's fine and imprison and classify as 
wicked and altogether base, such persons as are pro- 
fane — what do you say to that? I say, "No. Let's 
pray a little ourselves and raise the average." Let's 
look at the world as one of fair average of wickedness 
and errors and let's try to raise that average by doing 
right ourselves and not paying too much attention to 
our neighbor's misdoing. If we all do that, we will 
have no bad neighbors. They will all be as perfect as 
we are. And won't that be lovely ! 

Now I don't want any good Christian person to 
write me — many people have been writing me — and 
say that this signifies a plea for profanity. I don't 
mean anything like that. The bad is bad ; but we don't 
want to be looking at the bad too much. We should 
remember that dirt collects even in our own houses. 
Let's keep them clean and forget it. It is a penalty of 
living in an imperfect world. We will do better to be- 
lieve in the cleanly part of humanity and look for it. 
Many people spend all their lives bemoaning the evil 
that other people do. Ninety-nine per cent of it is a 
part of some great evolution of God. A few years ago 
we growled at the evil men were doing in slavery. We 
had a great war to free our land from it. The results 
are felt in this war. The evil stood big in our eyes. 
It beclouded man's vision. It blinded him to the love 
of home, the traditions of friendliness, the desires that 
were in the Southern heart. We went to work and 
fought and prayed and we raised the average. Those 
people were not to be classified as wicked altogether. 
God was using them to bring about a great ethical and 
religious lesson to the world. If we could only take 
folks on the average and not condemn them wholly 
when they should be condemned only in part, we would 
get along faster. 

So I say that what we need in the discussion of 
current topics in which apparent wrong meets our eye 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 71 

is a greater measure of that message of the Master, 
"Judge not; that ye be not judged" and in the spirit of 
David's appeal to judge the world "in righteousness." 
In other words we must let facts talk instead of pas- 
sions and prejudices and unfounded inferences as to 
the altogether wickedness of those whom we criticise. 
For, I do not believe that there is any person in whom 
there is not good. I do believe that there is a fair 
average of good in a great average of the world. 
What we have to do is to forget the classification — at- 
tack the wrong, leave out the personality and by pray- 
er and fight correct the error and raise the average of 
the world to another notch. 

That's what we are trying to do with the Hun. 



ON "WHY ONE MAN SUCCEEDED" 

HERE was once a merchant in Lewiston named 
George Ellard. 

He started life in Boston as porter in a 
shoe store. He never took any account of 
hours. When he was not working as porter 
he was sizing up shoes and working over 
the stock. 

"One day I went home," said he to me once, "and in 
iny pay envelope I found a mistake. The store had 
paid me too much. I took it back. The proprietor 
said that it was not a mistake. It happened several 
times after that while I worked there. But I kept 
right on working my full time on something, never 
'sojering,' never bothering other help by standing 
around talking to them, never doing injustice to my 
employers. 

One day the proprietor said to Ellard: "George, do 
you know where I can find a good, strong man, willing 




72 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

to work and take an interest in the success of this con- 
cern? I want a man who feels glad if we succeed; a 
man who will help us make the money that we pay 
him for work done — just the same as others pay us for 
work done." 

"What's the matter with me for porter?" said 
George Ellard. 

"You, George," said the boss, "why you won't do. 
You are to be superintendent of this whole concern. 
You go on to that job tomorrow if I can find your suc- 
cessor." 

By and by George Ellard decided that he would 
come to Lewiston and start his own shoe store. The 
concern for which he had worked in Boston said to 
him: "Sorry to lose you, George! But you know best. 
You may have our help in everything. If you want 
any bargains that we can give you, they are yours. 
We shall watch out for you in that way. If you want 
more credit, we shall try to get it for you." 

George Ellard grew wealthy and honored in Lewis- 
ton. He was a fine type of sturdy manhood. He died 
here some years ago. 

George Ellard was one of over 150 men employed in 
that Boston jobbing house of shoes. He stepped ahead 
because he never tried to get something for nothing; 
because he felt that his constancy would be appreciated 
as it was; because he never tried to beat the clock. 
The other 149 never got out of the rut. 




ON "BELIEVING" 

HE WRITER of these little talks has received 
the following from Frank H. Briggs of Wash- 
ington, D. C, formerly of Auburn, Maine, 
dated May 2d. 

If I mistake not, you are writing "Just 
Talks — On Common Themes." I like them. 
They are interesting. They are helpful. "The Voice 
of the Frog and Toad" particularly appeals to me just 
now. The spirit of courage and optimism therein ex- 
pressed reminds me of an experience of our friend 
Clark when in France three years ago. He visited 
Vaubecourt where the church had been demolished by 
the shell-fire of the Huns. He called upon the Priest 
who had conducted services in the ruined church and 
whose house was standing close to the ruin. When 
Clark approached, the Priest was on a ladder fastening 
vines to the side of his house. Coming down from the 
ladder he said to Clark, "My vines will do well now, 
they get more sun than they did last year." 

Can you beat that for optimism? The good old 
man then said, "You are a writer and will send news 
stories back to America," and with tears streaming 
down his cheeks he added, "Be good to France, be good 
to France." And Clark has been good to her. He says 
that every Frenchman is a tragic poet. On a knoll 
where a bloody battle was fought in 1914, sixty-seven 
French soldiers were buried. Some one erected a plain 
wooden cross and wrote upon it in pencil "Sixty-seven 
French soldiers lie buried here. They are dead, but who 
lives? FRANCE." 

Yes, spring will come to the hearts of those heroes. 
* * * 

The "Clark" referred to in this letter is a newspa- 
per man "of a different kind" — one of the truly conse- 
crated newspaper men who make us feel better for our 



74 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

profession when we think of them. Much of the poet, 
all of the idealist, he is a sort of iconoclast also — as I 
size him up — ready to break all of the idols of false 
gods. He has been in Washington as a correspondent 
of some of the great Chicago dailies for years. When 
the war broke out in Europe he was restless until he 
broke into the game and spent his life, almost, in it. 
He managed the Roosevelt campaign of publicity pre- 
liminary to the Chicago convention of 1916. He is an 
ornithologist and has written monographs on certain 
birds. He admires Col. Theodore Roosevelt above oth- 
er Americans — and T. R. liked him and they were 
personal friends. Such a man could not help being an 
optimist and a worker and a dreamer. 

But enough of Clark — charming as he is and clever 
and all of that. He would not cut much figure even 
with these if he did not believe. That's the touchstone 
— to be eternally, absolutely, altogether believing some- 
thing, believing it with your whole soul, believing it 
with your whole heart, believing it with your con- 
science, believing it with your sacrifices, believing it 
with your faith. Clark is one of that sort. He be- 
lieves a thing just as William Lloyd Garrison did. 
He'd die for it. 

And this brings me to the point of my "Just Talk." 

The sixty-seven French soldiers believed something. 
France believes. America is beginning — just begin- 
ning — to believe. 

As the Priest at Vaubecourt believed in God — the 
sun would bring the blossoms to the vines — so we must 
absolutely believe that God will bring the sunshine to 
the earth. 

You must believe! Accent that word, please. 
When you say, "believe," jump into it all over. Belief 
casts out all doubt. If you believe, you will be happy 
and when you are happy you work like the very old 
scratch. 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 75 

"He that believeth on Me, tho he were dead, yet 
shall he live." 

Are you dead — in all enthusiasms, all faiths, all 
hopes, all activities ? If not — ^believe in something. 



ON "IT COSTS BUT TWO CENTS" 




E FIND a good many people who think that a 
newspaper costs two cents. 

So, too, there's a good many people who 
think that the pew-rent is ten dollars a year. 
One is about as near right as the other and 
both are wrong. 
The pew-rent costs martyrdom, a Christ on the 
cross, crusades, holy wars, inquisition, trains of mis- 
sionaries, sacrifices in flame and blood wearying vigils 
by the midnight lamp, holy women in the church, the 
blood of Saints, the Pilgrim Fathers, the treasure of 
ages. 

The newspaper — I will be pardoned for the compari- 
son with the church — cost four hundred years of battle 
for human liberty, men imprisoned for the sake of 
truth, early martyrs in the stocks, the ears of Prynne, 
the pillory for Defoe, the tail of the cart to Tyburn for 
Roger L'Estrange, jail and the hangman's bonfire for 
early American colonial editors, the trials of John 
Wilkes and Junius, the throes of Milton's "Aeropa- 
gitica," the perils of the Massachusetts Spy and the 
ride of Paul Revere. 

The newspaper — a two-cent proposition! 
It is one of the largest industries in the United 
States. The printing business is capitalized at $720,- 
231,654 in the U. S. It employs over 700,000 people. 
There are 25,000 newspapers. Their income is over 
$810,000,000 a year. They circulate over 31,000,000 



76 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

copies every day of the daily newspaper. Of all papers 
and periodicals they circulate a total of 250,594,907 
copies per issue. The total number of daily papers 
issued in a year is more than 9,000,000,000 — over nine 
thousand million. A twelve page paper will take over 
nine feet of paper a yard wide. The web of paper 
needed to print all of the daily papers of America for 
a year would be 81,000 million feet long. The web of 
paper from the daily press of America will reach from 
earth to sun in a few years. 

One New York newspaper has a yearly expense ac- 
count of about $5,000,000. Some manufacturing in- 
dustry, is it not? It costs one American newspaper 
close to two millions a year for newsprint paper and 
ink. Some little two-cent paper, eh! Only it is sold 
for a cent a copy. 

What else — some brains, some responsibility, some 
risk, some patience, some genius, some courage, some 
power, some faith, some hope, some foresight, some 
statesmanship, some philosophy, some study, some 
work. 

A newspaper costs also heart and soul, gray hairs 
and early graves. It calls on conscience, and demands 
the sacrifice of comfort and vacations. It is manufac- 
turing, preachment, prophecy, business risk and many 
other hazards, combined. 

It is eternal watchfulness — ^blazing competition in 
the search of news, heroes in every field, all habited 
places of earth, under the earth, under the sea, in the 
skies, over battle fields, over the top, in the trenches, in 
the cabinets, in the courts, in commerce and in finance 
— all specialists — all for two cents a day. 

NOW! Do you think that it costs but two cents. 
True, that's what it sells for. But it costs! As well 
ask what freedom costs ! 




ON "A NIGHT IN THE OPEN" 

HE night began to shut down and we were far 
from camp. We might have made it, but the 
October sunset enticed us and the swift flying 
twilight bade us stay. There would be worry 
in camp, but there would be something 
new out here, in the open, and Adventure 
beckoned us with winsome smile. 

We built a fire in the open tote-road by the side of a 
low embankment of tall grasses. The tote-road is a 
sort of Fifth Avenue in the deep woods. It was built 
for carrying supplies to logging camps. It had been 
long since abandoned and its grassy way is now un- 
touched by the slow, grinding runner of the heavy 
sleds. The trees stand all around it, deep, mysterious. 
If you will step out into the middle of the road and look 
upward you may see the stars. But if you look right 
or left or straight ahead or backward there are the tall 
trees watching you and swaying to and fro as tho mov- 
ing to some song of the forests. 

We had supper — not much — ^but a few remnants of 
a luncheon and a partridge that we plucked and roasted 
on a spit before the open fire. Then we lit our pipes 
and lay on the boughs that we had cut and piled up 
alongside the embankment of the road. And then we 
were very comfortable, on the soft bed, feet to the fire, 
Injun fashion. The sparks from the fire rose softly up 
into the cool, fresh air. It was too pleasant for words. 
Flames from an open fire in the woods have a curious 
way with them. They seem to be very friendly and 
social. They comfort one as never can they do else- 
where — not even in the broad fireplace. There, they 
are circumscribed.. Here, they seem to reach out 
and, now and then, open up vistas in the woods and 
then shut them quickly as tho permitting you to peep 
into woodland arcana. I remember looking out into 



78 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

them as tho into cathedrals — the columnar vastness of 
St. Peter's at Rome or that wonderful nave at Milan. 

You will easily fall asleep with your feet to the open 
fire of a night, in the open. And then, something will 
awaken you, and you will declare that it is the stillness. 
In reality it is the forest calling you to arouse and hear 
its story. It sighs and sings. It rubs branches to- 
gether as the man plays the bull-fiddle. It has high 
trebles in the upper levels. The brooks play like harps, 
away off. There is a low rustling of indefinable things. 
It might be tiny life, surging to and fro, underfoot. It 
might be some vast spirit of the forest, moving among 
the trees. Often you are not sure that it is a sound. 
It may be only the throbbing of your life-blood in the 
intense stillness. 

I remember that along about two o'clock in the 
morning when it was very dark, I arose and put more 
wood on the fire. Then I stepped out into the road 
and looked up into the sky. Far up, and up, swung the 
spruce tops. All around hummed the wind in the sur- 
face of the forest-deeps, as the winds swing over the 
the ocean tops to them on the floor of the sea. Every- 
thing was full of immensity, primordial. And yet, in 
that hour, I had an actual experience. Instead of feel- 
ing myself but an atom, but a tiny thing amid all this, 
I suddenly and forever came to feel myself one with 
pine and spruce, with the leaf and branch, with the 
listening things in the woods, with the spirits and fays, 
that might be all about me, — one, even, with Arcturus 
and Orion and all the gleaming suns that shone on 
high. I never had a greater accession of Faith. 

If you are inclined to doubt God, go into the woods ; 
camp of a night by the open camp-fire and observe His 
ways. For the camp-fire's gleam reaches to the stars 
and often brings their shining down into the human 
heart. God may lay his hands on you some night 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 79 

when you are out in the open. He has, on a great 
many people, by sea and by land. 

The next day we went rather sheepishly to camp. 
"Why didn't you come home ?" asked they. 

"Well, you see," said my companion, and then 
paused. 

"How in the name of the Lord could we?" said L 
And they never knew what I meant. 



ON "TOM AND HIS HATCHET' 




ID YOU ever read Rabelais' story of Tom Well- 
hung, the honest country fellow of Gravot, 
who lost his hatchet and set up such a bellow- 
ing to Jupiter that he disturbed the gods at 
their council until Jupiter sent Mercury down 
to find out what was the trouble? 
When the light-heeled deity came back and reported 
to the Gods, Jupiter said to Mercury, "Run down and 
give the poor fellow three hatchets — one his own, one 
of gold and one of silver. If he take his own, give him 
the other two ; if he take the silver or the gold, chop off 
his head with his own and henceforth serve me all 
losers of hatchets the same." 

So Mercury does as bid and in a trice he alights 
nimbly on earth and throwing down the three hatchets, 
says : "Thou has bawled long enough to be a' dry ; thy 
prayers are granted by Jupiter; see which of these is 
thy hatchet and take it away with thee." 

Tom lifts up the golden hatchet; peeps on it and 
finds it heavy; then staring at Mercury, says, "Cods- 
zouks, this is none o' mine ; I won't ha' 't." The same 
he does with the silver. At last he takes up his own 
hatchet, examines it at the end of the helve and finds 
his own mark there and ravished with joy, he cries, 
"By the mass, this is my hatchet." 



80 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

"Honest fellow," says Mercury, "I leave it with 
thee ; take it ; and because thou hast wished moderately 
and chosen justly, Jupiter gives you these two others. 
Thou hast now the means to be rich. Be also honest." 

Tom started off and went his way. Finally he 
came to the city of Chinon where he sold his silver and 
gold hatchets and bought lands and barns and a great 
many other things that Master Francois gives in detail 
as is his wont. And he was very rich. 

His brother bumpkins became amazed at Tom's for- 
tune and made it their business to find out how he got 
it, and learning that it was by losing a hatchet, they 
sold everything and bought hatchets and lost them and 
their laments stirred again the councils of heaven and 
brought Jupiter to account. The bumpkins brayed 
and bellowed and prayed. "Ho, ho Jupiter, my hatchet, 
my hatchet!" The air rang with the cries of these 
rascally losers of hatchets. 

Mercury was nimble in bringing them hatchets. 
To each the offering was the same — a silver, a gold, 
and the hatchet that he had lost. Each loser was for 
the gold, giving thanks in abundance to Jupiter, but in 
the nick of time as he bowed and stooped to take it 
from the ground! Whip! in a trice. Mercury cut off 
his head as commanded. And of heads there was just 
the same number as there was of lost hatchets. 

You see how it was with these rascals. You see 
how it is now with most of those who wish something 
easy. They never wish in moderation — never satisfied 
with what good fortune brings them, let it be much or 
little. 

Will you be like him of whom Rabelais tells — ^who 
wished that Our Lady's church were brim full of steel 
needles to the spire and that he could have as many 
ducats as might be crammed into as many bags as 
might be sewed with these needles, until they wore out 
both at point and eye. 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 81 

Wish, therefore, for mediocrity and it shall be given 
to you and over and above yet ; that is to say, provided 
you bestir yourselves manfully and do your very best 
in the meantime. 



ON "TREES AND FORESTS" 

T IS USUALLY the case that we do not prize 
what we have, as fully as we should. In the 
days of the pioneers there was an inborn 
hatred of the forests. They were dark, 
dreadful and inhabited by wild beasts. They 
say that, at Andover Seminary seventy-five 
years ago, if a young student wanted to ingratiate him- 
self with the faculty he went out before breakfast and 
cut down one or two of the beautiful trees in their 
great avenue before anyone was awake. The govern- 
ment took a certain care of the forests for ship-build- 
building and after that, dropped the subject for years. 
Maine got rid of her forests largely because people 
hated them. They wanted farms, fields, settlers, rail- 
roads. 

Like many other good things, regard for the tree 
has come into its own again. It is time for the govern- 
ment of states again to take the tree in charge. It is 
high time that trees were a public ward and no man 
could cut them even on his own land, without public 
consent. Without trees we should have barrenness all 
over the land. Why let the portable saw mill starve a 
state? 

So it is that in every civilized community, the own- 
ership of forests eventually comes to the government. 
It is estimated that even the most acute business man 
does not look forward over six years. The state ought 
to do better than this. The state ought to bet on the 



82 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

forest and appropriate its money to buying them for 
the people. The state of Maine ought to spend a mil- 
lion dollars every two years on buying up its own do- 
main for the people. If I were Governor, or a candi- 
date for Governor, this would be my platform. I would 
buy land for the Folks. Frederick the Great did it and 
Prussia is somewhat pummeling us because her taxes 
have been so light these hundreds of years because of 
the income from the forests. 

I was reading the other day a little story in one of 
Edward Everett Hale's books about Bishop Watson — 
he wrote the "Apology, you know — !" How very angry 
he was with Charles James Fox because he gave him 
what Watson called the poorest see in England! But 
Watson had a stubborn streak in him and when he 
found himself in the north of Wales, where the sav- 
agery of generations had destroyed all of the wood, he 
put in his time and his sixpences planting firs on 
ground that seemed worthless. He outlived the six- 
year period and kept on raising seedling firs and plant- 
ing them and when he died his people found themselves, 
to their surprise, among the richest men in England 
because the trees had grown, while their father was 
both asleep and awake. 

In 1900, Prussia received over ten million dollars 
revenue from her forests after they had paid all ex- 
penses of care and development. There is one institu- 
tion in Maine that is almost as worthy to own the for- 
ests as is the state — ^because it is wise under a great 
man — and that is the Great Northern Paper Co. Its 
President, Garret Schenck, is a man who sees over six 
years forward. He cuts only the "crop" of trees — nev- 
er devastates. He is a "builder." Would that there 
were more like Garret Schenck — a man whom Maine 
ought to decorate with the Legion of Honor. 

There is no more an inborn hatred of the tree. We 
have begun to revere it. We consider as wanton and 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 83 

ruthless, the man who fells a beautiful elm for com- 
merce. He has cut down and killed a living thing, 
something beautiful as a cathedral — in its way. We 
look to forests as to sanctuaries — ^taverns of rest for 
cur very souls ; nearer to God than the town ; carpeted 
with finer tapestries than the looms can make; aisled 
with silver pathways for the living streams; studded 
overhead with gold and jade and chrysoprase; all the 
while beating and throbbing with the free music of 
the winds in the trees — an organ whose melodies are 
supreme and sempiternal. 

Can't we — a free people — do something to save for 
our children and their children, every year a little 
more and more of the domain of this sort — next to the 
church, in devotional impulse, better than some hospi- 
tals in its healing ? I vote for it ! Do you ? If you do 
— say so! 



ON "THE GOLDEN RULE IN DAILY LIFE" 

BOUT thirty-two years ago, a calendar came to 
my desk that served a good purpose. 

It bore on the top of it, a good-sized pic- 
ture of a carpenter's square printed in bright 
gold and, under it, these words, "The Golden 
Rule : As ye would that others should do unto 
you, do ye even so unto them." 

It occurred to me that this was a very good rule in 
newspaper reporting and that if followed, it would save 
many a heart-burning ; soothe many a pillow ; ease over 
many a difficulty. I am taking no credit and am will- 
i.-g to let things go so far as I am concerned, as I 
stand conscious of many shortcomings and many fail- 
ures, but none the less sure, this rule has saved 
many a person in these cities in these thirty years or 
more from much distress. 




84 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

"Put yourself in the other fellow's place." A small 
indiscretion; a lapse from the straight way, a chance 
for the newspaper to make public the ignominy — all of 
these are to be counted as tho you, yourself, sad and 
repentant, faced the ignominy of the big-type and the 
headliners on the front page. There is no power so 
blighting as printer's ink. It is often placed in the 
hands of immaturity. A mere boy may hold in his 
hand the very dynamite of publicity that may blast 
homes, break hearts, ruin lives and weaken hope. Not 
that crime, wickedness and deceit do not need to be 
scourged. They must be. Scorpion's whips are not 
too much for wilful men and women who debase public 
life and morals. 

But the golden things of life are those that, after 
all, have not been printed. I recall one Christmas eve 
when a father, whose wayward son had been appre- 
hended in wrong-doing, came to me and asked for con- 
sideration on this day when of all days it was peace on 
earth, good-will to men. It was a serious matter, but 
repentance was on its way. Yet it was "news." Yes, it 
was news. But it was something else than news also. 
It was condemnation. The story never happened. The 
young man is now a fine and capable business man. 
We have never spoken of it since, but I doubt not that 
every Christmas day he says something to himself 
about it. 

It is safe to say that there is no better rule of con- 
duct in life than this one: No man who has power of 
any kind can afford to slight it. It applies with just as 
much force and effect to other business than the news- 
paper-business. But in a thousand ways it has oper- 
ated in the life of this business to far greater good than 
can be measured. 

Try it out! Look at everything from the view- 
point of the other man or woman. Say to yourself, 
"Would I like to have this thing done to me, that I am 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 85 

proposing to do to my fellow-man ?" If you are going 
to attack a man personally, even if you have the goods, 
think it over : "Is this in the interest of public good, or 
is it merely to satisfy a personal spite or a feeling of 
revenge ?" And then ask, "How would I like it, under 
the circumstances, if the situation were reversed?" 

This is very old stuff. It was said a very great 
while ago. But it has stood the test of time and a bil- 
lion or more instances. It is good religion, good mor- 
als, good business. It is the white way. It is the help- 
ful way. Society never suffered from it. 

If the Huns had only thought of it, there would have 
been no war — no superman philosophy, no reign of 
frightfulness, no rapings in Belgium, no bayoneting of 
helpless non-combatants, no hereafter, in the day when 
the grim reckoning will be made — here, or before the 
Master. Nearly all religion is comprised in it; for it 
suggests the adoption of the first commandment, which 
is the greatest : "Thou shalt love thy God with all thy 
heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength, 
and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 



ON "THE QUIETER ROAD" 

FTER you have driven for many miles on a 
level, man-made road, it is pleasant to turn 
aside on one of those old-fashioned country 
roads that seem just to have happened. 

They meander aimlessly under arching 
trees, the wheel-ruts soft to the tires and 
making no sound. You can see no distance ahead and 
are therefore content to drive slowly and get acquaint- 
ed with a friendly road. 

There is spur and opportunity for thinking in the 
lazy country road. In the first place you have been go- 




86 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

ing too fast, anyway, on the boulevard. You have been 
burning up things — gasoline, tires, money, nerves, 
time, human-companionship, home-ties. You have been 
just speeding thru the air, seeing nothing, eyes fixed on 
the road, straight-ahead monotony hour by hour, day 
by day, mind attuned to nothing but getting there and 
then getting elsewhere, speed-mad. 

So — when you do turn aside into the quiet country 
road for a time and lean back, perhaps you have time 
to notice who is at your side. She's your wife — I hope. 
You can possibly find time to take her hand as you did 
in the long ago, and say a sweet word to her. Perhaps 
you may be able to forget business long enough to get 
sentimental. It will do no harm — on a country road — 
when the trees arch low and the birds chatter love- 
lyrics. You can perhaps draw a long breath and light 
a cigar and go so slowly that the smoke will rise in in- 
cense around your head and filter thru the trees. You 
can stretch your legs and unbutton your vest and be a 
man. You can inhale long, long breaths of this kind 
of air and never get a sniff of engine-exhaust. This 
sort of a road leads you away from towns and tempta- 
tion, where you may forget in what country you are 
traveling. You notice how the sunshine checkers the 
brown earth of the old meandering road and lies also 
lovingly on your garments. To be decent you should 
ride not over six miles an hour — or two — ^in this sanc- 
tuary. Otherwise you will disturb the chipmunks and 
disconcert Madame Partridge and send her scurrying 
away with her brood. If it is the right kind of a road 
— and this one is of the right kind — ^you will meet no 
one. If it is the right kind of a road even the guide- 
board is down and points to heaven significantly and 
very truthfully — some Harrison or Bethel in the skies. 
You may even stop in the road and hear no horn 
of displeasure behind you, tooting you "off the earth." 
You may hear a stake-driver or a whip-poor-will or see 
a deer, in any midsummer day. 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 87 

It is the road on which, as Thoreau says of his road 
"to the Corner," one "can walk and recover the lost 
child that I am, without ringing any bell ; where noth- 
ing ever was discovered to detain a traveler; where I 
never passed the time of day with anyone — being in- 
different to arbitrary divisions of time; where Tullius 
Hostilius might have disappeared, at any rate has nev- 
er been seen." The pale lobelia and the Canada snap- 
dragon, a little hardback and meadow-sweet peep over 
the fence, nothing more serious to obstruct the view. 
A road that passes over the height of land between 
earth and Heaven separating those streams that flow 
earthward from those that flow heavenward. 

About six miles an hour — I have suggested. It may 
bring you into strange clearings, dooryards that run 
down to the old road. These casual glimpses of life 
strengthen the pleasure of the solitude, as you run on, 
up hill and down, around sly corners where the trees 
bend to the road. Just a bit like life itself, isn't it! 
Off the boulevard — when the nerves give out ! Out of 
the sight and sound of traffic when the fired body re- 
fuses longer to function. Back to nature when the old 
"doc" takes his finger off your pulse and says "rest- 
cure for you." 

Why not quit the boulevard, occasionally now and 
then before the "old doc" warns you? Why not slow 
up and turn into some old-fashioned meandering coun- 
try road, where it makes no odds which way you fare 
whether you are coming or going; where the spirit is 
free and the soul is at peace. You will do it eventually 
— why not now? 



ON "THE TRUTH WITHOUT A TEXT' 




E ARE ALL under sentence of death, said 
Walter Pater in a famous paragraph. Hence 
we should not spend our time here in listless- 
ness but should give ourselves up to art and 
song. 

That was written some years ago. Of 
course one must not say such things now. Art and 
song are out-of-date. All emotions but hate and desire 
to kill are tabooed. One feels himself a slacker to be 
talking about art and song — much less give himself up 
to them. Such things as made Shakespeare, Milton, 
Wordsworth, Goethe, Michelangelo, Tennyson, Shelley 
— these are no longer to be compared with the 
Kaiser and his sons. It used to be a common phil- 
osophy that art and song and literature counted. Now 
it is the machine-gun and the poison^shell. But after 
all — we have hopes. We believe that Truth is mighty. 
These days of anxiety are long. Days of despair 
are longer. The plain fact is that we must not let go 
of art and song. We must not let go of Truth and 
Beauty and Goodness. Whatever happens, we must 
not lose faith in the Providence of God. We must go 
to some place to find it when the things around us seem 
very dark. If it is in your Bible, seek it. If it is at 
your confessor's knees, seek it. Art and song were 
about all of Pater's religion. He was a semi-pagan of 
epicureanism. Perhaps YOU have something else. 
Go to it. But whatever you do, don't give up even if 
the Germans hammer at the gates of America. 

One of the best remedies in this troubled age, is to 
do your bit every day and then take a walk into the 
fields and woods. They are tuneful of the thrush, which 
is not yet aware of being a slacker, and all blossoming 
with the posies, unaware that this is the era of fright- 
fulness. Out there a man has a right to lift his head 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 89 

and smile into the face of God. He is no slacker, walk- 
ing in a field. He is no shirker, seeking the solution of 
the mystery of the sentence of death, out where the 
blossoms scent the air. If it be wrong to give thought 
to art and song, why thus do trail and bloom all the 
flowers of Milton's "Lycidas," Arnold's "Thyrsis" and 
Shelley's "Question?" 

Hills erode ; oak-trees fall ; but they outlast dynas- 
ties. As I have said, poppies spring from crater-pits. 
Nature cannot be beaten or gassed; or driven beyond 
the Marne. If you go into the June woods and lie on 
your back at noon, you may see the eagle nesting her 
young — a liberty that symbolizes our national hopes. 
The trees stand very erect and independent. If they 
fall, they fertilize. If they pass the season and become 
dead in foliage, they have seeded new patches on which 
the sunlight falls. Here is life-eternal, unending, 
resurrectionary. If this were undisturbed a billion 
years, still would Nature keep on reproducing its ener- 
gies. It is the work of God alone. Man never had a 
hand in it. It is the Creator's own garden-spot. Here 
He shows you what is what. Who's who does not 
count. Here are color, art, song, religion, purpose, 
divinity. Go out and find them. 

And if you stay until evening and the slant rays of 
the sun linger among the tree-trunks as thru stained 
glass windows in the cathedral of pillars, and the day 
grows grave and reverend, you may look up thru the 
branches and see the evening stars. 

Perhaps there is one for you. 

If so, it will surely comfort and uplift you. And 
this is no sermon. It is the cold truth, without a text. 




ON THE "LADIES" 

HE "ladie" (or rather "woman," which is the 
preferable term because it is older) is es- 
sential. There were no "ladies" in the Bible 
but there were a number of women. If they 
had not been essential, it is very likely that 
man would have tried to get along without 
them and save expenses. Adam tried it a couple of 
days and caved in. They have since been taken on as 
a regular thing and are now saving the world for de- 
mocracy with war-bread. 

Inasmuch as they have been in the world quite a 
while, it is customary to say that the ladies have ad- 
vanced in power and in liberty. And this is probably 
true. Take some of the notable women and think how 
they were held back in the old days. There was Joan 
of Arc! Kept under an apple tree until she was six- 
teen years old, or thereabout, she was let loose in armor 
and so repressed by the conservative spirit of the times 
that all she was permitted to do was to storm a few 
cities, capture a few princes, crown a king or two, con- 
fute the learned judges at her trial, save a nation 
and die in the flames of martyrdom to rise from her 
ashes to be the Voice, the appeal, the spiritual salva- 
tion of a nation. Consider the idle and repressed ex- 
istence of Cleopatra ! There was a woman who might 
have made something of herself if she had been given 
half a chance. She was only a Queen of Egypt and a 
few other communities, roaming around in barges, 
dressed in nothing but a camisole ; setting modern fash- 
ions and working out the fate of a few Roman poten- 
tates. Nothing but serfdom, that's what! Then 
there was Lucretia Borgia ! A timid, shrinking thing ! 
Think what a bully good Red Cross she would be today 
in Kaiser Bill's immediate family. What a boon she 
would be to society if she could only be over there mix- 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 91 

ing cooling drinks for the Hohenzollern family. Then 
there was that blushing violet of a woman, Queen 
Elizabeth. What a place would she take today in soci- 
ety. I can see her now, taking her place as a "lady" 
among women, dancing the fox-trot in perfect freedom 
and perspiring freely in a peekaboo waist with pink 
ribbons showing daintily thru. Poor Queen Elizabeth ! 
She never really had a chance. No more did Boadicea 
or Sappho or Molly Pitcher or a number of other 
women. 

Of course we hear a good deal more about the ladies 
now than we used to and we see a good deal more of 
them. That is, so to speak, if one's eyesight is good. 
It appears from what one may hear and see, even if he 
does wear bi-f ocal spectacles — that woman is emerging 
from her hitherto environment. But I don't know 
about that. Eve had some environment. Of course 
she really made the fashions and had no rivals. The 
VDgue was simple in her day, but she did her best. 
And in some sense she was ahead of her time. And 
she was not extravagant. Nobody can say that of Eve, 
when he looks back, and, as Mark Twain says, sees our 
simple and lowly first of women garbed in her modifi- 
cation of Harry Lauder's Highland costume. 

So, in my humble opinion, woman has not changed 
so much. Some men have tried to keep her back, but 
they have not succeeded. They have tried to keep her 
brains in chains ; but you will notice that it has been a 
hard job. It is no longer possible to deny her the pos- 
session of a soul, an entity whose future is hers to de- 
termine, in all freedom under the law. She has the 
same right that man has to the establishment of her 
s'^rvice to the world, by work, by voice, by vote. 

And spiritually, in the sympathy of her service, she 
far transcends man. The world is full of Florence 
Nightingales, today. They are all over the death- 
strewn fields of Flanders and Verdun. They are hourly 



92 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

playing the part of hero with stout hearts and un- 
thinking altruism. And they are suffering losses — 
deep wounds in the heart of hearts, where the first- 
born cuddled and crooned. We talk a lot about emanci- 
pation of woman. But bear this in mind — ^whenever 
she had a chance — as queen or warrior, or poet, or 
preacher, or physician, or nurse, or scientist or cab- 
driver, she has made good. The only agency from 
which she needs to be emancipated is the narrow, two- 
bit-wide opinion of the so-called man, who calls her a 
lower order of creation, and who does not know what 
creation means, as addressed to the human soul. 



ON "THE PRICE OF A GOOD TIME" 

SAW a moving-picture the other day entitled 
"The Price of a Good Time." It was intended 
to show that girls cannot monkey with 
conventions, unless tragedy may follow. 

So far, it was a fine picture. The poor girl 
was led to suicide and the man went scot free. 
And the other woman in the picture was softened and 
induced to put off the garb of snobbishness. This 
seemed tough. The girl was the least guilty in the 
whole crowd. But she had to pay. And that is the 
rule. 

So girls better look out! They have to pay for 
good times with usury. Others pay for them fre- 
quently at going prices. The man who eats hot-sup- 
pers to excess, pays for the good time with a warty 
liver and "Bright's." The wine-bibber pays for his 
time with a headache. The money-grubber and miser 
pays for his "Good Time" by having his heirs fight over 
his will. The Speed-demon pays for his good time in a 
smash-up. The man who takes revenge into his own 
hand and whose idea of a "Good Time" is carried into 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 93 

effect, dies in the Chair or passes his days in a prison. 
But the girl pays the highest price of all. There was 
an indelible mark on the Magdalene. 

But in this picture, the stress was laid on the home, 
from which this particular girl went to her "Good 
Time." It was a tough-looking home. Colors are laid 
on moving pictures with a broad brush. Here was a 
brother, preaching anarchism ; a disagreeable mother ; 
a paralytic father, who had to be fed with a spoon and 
who dribbled his bread and milk over his chin. This 
was shown as a foil to a happy home in which the girl 
had no need to go elsewhere for her fun. This was, of 
course, the home of one of those care-free and portly 
persons, known as the traffic-cop. His home was 
sweet. His girl could have her "steady" come every 
evening and sit on the door-steps. Not so the other 
girl. Her home-life was cold, hard, full of nagging, 
sordid, depressing. She went, therefore, where she 
could have her "Good Time." And she settled. 

This is a very old story and very crudely told; but 
there is truth in it and the kind of truth that has to be 
enforced frequently, lest we forget. Girls who have 
good homes, sometimes seem to lack appreciation, but 
as a rule they are not so apt to be driven to the streets 
by this modern lust for a "Good Time." At any rate, 
the household where there is fun and laughter and 
friendship and sweet forbearance, is not so apt to have 
its tragedies. And if it does have them, there is no 
recrimination. Those who have made it a "home," 
have at least done their best. The filial love — a sweeter 
thing does not exist — could not have been extin- 
guished there! It must have been trampled on, out- 
side the premises, by some Hun. 

So, most people who saw the picture, found a fairly 
good lesson in it. And there are a lot of good lessons 
in the movies. They are often enforced with a blud- 
geon, so to speak, but they get there mostly. If any 



94 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 



girl in the audience was touched by this picture to the 
degree of pledging herself to count the cost of "good 
times" before breaking the rule of "Safety First" for 
her name, her good repute, her mother's heart, her fa- 
ther's faith — it has done a work that the church may 
emulate. 

The "Good Time" is quickly over. The long, long 
life stretches before you. You don't want to walk its 
pathway as a social, a moral cripple, but upright, with 
the crown of womanhood like a halo and the sense of 
devotion and righteousness as supporting arms. 




ON "THE WIND AND THE SOUL" 

NE day last fall I went into the woods, under 
the shadow of Little Spencer mountain, not 
so very far from the Canadian border. It 
was a Sunday and the winds were blowing an 
October gale until the ponds were full of 
racing white-caps and the beaches lashed 
themselves white with foam and the torn roots of the 
lily pads tossed high into the shore grasses, dripping 
with the water. 

The path was along "the blazed trail" to the old 
lumber-camps — a peaceful path, among very large first- 
growth spruce, over a running brook and, all of the 
while, in a dense solitude that had no roads or paths 
save the blazed trail. It was after two o'clock in the 
afternoon and the sun was westering thru the tops of 
the trees, but below all was faintly lighted as are the 
deep woods. 

It was the gale in the tree-tops that got me. It 
sounded with the swaying and groaning and the sweep- 
ing on, wave after wave, most like the riding of Huns 
on the "coursers of the air." I sat on a huge tree whose 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 95 

trunk, broken in some gale, had fallen over the trail. 
Say! Everyone ought to go out alone and get ac- 
quainted with himself some day like this when the 
wind blows and Nature is rioting. 

All of the elves of the upper world seemed to be 
playing up there. No one knows what strange fancies 
may come and what poem may come from it. 

I wrote something and left it where I wrote it on 
the clean scarf of the prostrate spruce, which I made 
with my hunting knife. I expect it was a poor verse. 
But I remember that then I thought it fine because I 
was deeply moved by the music — the "immense" music 
that played in a great symphony overhead. And the 
other day — what do you suppose happened! A man 
came into the office and asked for me. His name was 
Ralph Cuddy. Said he, "I saw, last winter, on a tree in 
the woods near Moosehead, way in by a brook that lies 
next to a swamp, some verses you wrote and signed 
about the wind in the tree-tops. I was thinking about 
them today. I live in Portland. I had to come to 
Lewiston. I decided to come in and see you. I am 
going right back into the woods. I want to hear the 
waves on the beaches. I want to hear the wind in the 
trees." 

Now the wind is a mystery and a friend and a foe 
and a spur to wicked consciences and a balm to the sick 
and a strange babbler. It is a night friend crooning in 
the chimney. It is a wild and dissipated roisterer 
howling around corners of dark nights like drunken 
men in orgies. It is a banshee picking at the shutters 
and rattling windows. It is a horde of furies in storms 
as I have heard them in the Gulf Stream when ships 
were going down to sea. It is a fine companion for the 
striding heart of him who goes afield just to see the 
clouds a-dancing. It is the piping of Peter Pan, if you 
like. It is the music of a summer night. It is the kiss of 
angels, on weary foreheads. It is the long, deep, in- 



96 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

drawn breath of the planet and its exhalation. Oh, 
man ! There are as many winds as you and all you love 
may have of moods. It is a sigh, a song, a discord, a 
dithyramb. The wind soft-foots around sometimes 
in the woods like some animate thing. You can seem 
to see it watching you from behind a bush. It draws 
near, as Browning says, "with a running hush." It is 
the voice of just one thing — life! for without it the 
world would be dead. It is the breath of Nature thru 
all its innumerable throats waking the world to a great 
choral chant, for the glory of God ! 

Now that is not at all what I wrote on the clean, 
white wood of the scarfed spruce last fall up there in 
the woods. A chap has a right to be sentimental in the 
woods, provided he does not impose it on any one. 
But just the same, I would not give up the friendship 
that I have for the wind, in all of its phases, for any 
other thing in nature. The beating rains, the wild 
gales! They soothe and refresh. They seem broth- 
erly. And often I have had the notion, that in the last 
hour — the last heart-beat, the wind, that loves us best, 
comes along from its waiting thru all the ages and 
takes care of the little new soul of us, just unfurling its 
wings for "the new adventure" and upbears it and leads 
it safely on, to the place appointed for it from the be- 
ginning and so on world without end, forever and 
forever. 




ON "THE APPEAL OF MYSTERY" 

HERE is a memory of old times that most of 
us have now, undiminished by the years that 
have passed. And that is the early morning 
arrival of the circus. How we did love to get 
up and see the circus come in. 

I don't mean the modern circus that came 
by railroad train, last year, but the circus that came in 
over the road, fifty years ago — Stone and Murray's, for 
instance, with its band wagon drawn by forty white 
horses. Count them ! For-r-r-rty Hors-s-s-es ! 

"Here they come!" Dim thru the morning mist a 
cloud of dust; the creaking of wagons; indistinct 
sounds that we conjured into roaring of wild hyenas 
and ravening of tigers and the bleeding of behemoths. 
Every marvel that had adorned the sides of barns for 
weeks — we anticipated and we expected to see; and 
every glimpse out there on the roadside (barefooted 
boys with more wonders before them than any circus 
could ever give) was just so much, pilfered from the 
show, whose admission was the untold sum of a quar- 
ter of a dollar. 

Then the dusty trail behind the show to town ; the 
stay at the circus ground lugging water to assuage the 
thirst of the elephant; the forgotten breakfast; the 
tired lad trudging home about eleven o'clock to get 
mother's tender comfort on his absence ; the nap before 
dinner ; the return to the circus-ground ; the afternoon 
show ; the evening regrets not to be able to see it again ; 
the side-shows and ballyhoos ; the visions of actors in 
tights thru the open fly of the dressing tent ; the sight 
of the circus-people eating supper; the smells of the 
sawdust and the animals — it is a composite picture of 
the boyhood experiences of every man. 

What was the lure of the circus? It was the lure 
of the greatest joy of life — mystery. The mystery of 



98 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

people is their greatest charm. Those people who are 
commonplace, who never do the unexpected, have no 
charm in the common use of the word. The lure of 
books that endure is — mystery. A man writes a 
learned book telling you all about life. Poor man! 
With maybe fifty years of experience, telling you the 
secret of life. Better read the Adventure of the Valor- 
ous Knight Quixote de la Mancha. We link arms in 
companionship with the man who has charm even if 
he is short on facts ; for, after all, we use learning given 
us much as we use money and spread it around and 
have small regard for the person who gives it to us. It 
is current coin hard to get and not so interesting ex- 
cept for its uses. But the mystery-man — him we love 
and follow. 

To boyhood eyes the circus opened new worlds. So, 
too, ever since in life we have been hunting for new 
worlds. Some go to strange lands and over seas and 
into the desert and over the mountain tops to find an- 
swer to the desire. 

This instinctive craving was planted for some pur- 
pose — thus to be a ruling passion of man. The appeal 
to crawl under the tent to see the glories on the other 
side! The glimpses of strange creatures in gold and 
tinsel! The desire not for facts alone but for things 
never seen on sea or land! The eager yearning for 
visions of some new apocalypse not in our native vil- 
lage! All these are implanted in every man in some 
degree — in some more than in others. 

What is it all but a part of the elemental dower of 
humankind that reaches out in the finite for what is to 
be found only in the infinite. 

So when we small boys in the dry and dusty dawn 
a half a century ago, and when you boys of this later 
age get up to see the circus — you are simply responding 
to the call of Adam and Eve — to know mystery ! 




ON "THEM PANTS" 

OODROW WILSON'S advent into high society 
in London reminds me of my own — it is so 
different. And as one must occasionally 
lapse into the autobiographical, my readers 
will forgive me if I digress a bit and call their 
attention to a down-easter in London one 
October evening in 1900. 

It was the close of the first day and as in duty 
bound it was my desire to make a stir in London, like 
any true American — Mr. Wilson included. So before 
leaving Maine, I bought a pair of trousers, designed by 
a Lewiston tailor and warranted to be made on the 
architecture of the latest word in London as seen on a 
red and blue plate in the tailor-shop. As I recall it the 
pants were red, in the picture, but I chose a more mod- 
est color. As we came into Paddington, the city was 
packed with returning Boer war veterans, the City Im- 
perial Volunteers, and it was impossible to get a hotel 
nearer in the city, so we stopped at this beautiful ter- 
minal tavern. I did my duty to London by buying a 
high hat. Nobody really was anybody, in London, in 
those days, without a high hat. And that night a very 
clever and stylish looking New York gentleman who 
had been living in London, came over to the hotel to 
take our party out for an evening in select society. 
We had a fine little company of fellow-travelers, ladies 
and gentlemen with us, and I decided to make London 
sit up and take notice with my new trousers — other- 
wise, "them pants." 

I went up to my room to dress. The pants had never 
been taken from the original package, but hung in all 
their flowing beauty in the wardrobe in the fine old ma- 
hogany room that we occupied. As I took them down, 
they seemed to be indescribably long and flowing. 
They seemed to be ells and ells longer than any pants 



100 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

I had ever owned before ; but there they were, just as I 
had picked them; just as I had plucked them. I stood 
them up straight on the carpet and the button of the 
top looked me square in the eye. They had rotundity. 
They had slack behind; they had breadth across the 
crupper, that I never thought measured my girth. A 
sinking of the heart befell me. With feverish haste I 
stepped into those pants, aware that the eyes of royalty 
and the ladies might rest upon them. I reached for 
the seat of those pants and lo ! I was lost. 

Dear friends! Picture me — a hurried departure 
from Lewiston; a pair of pants built on impulse; the 
only pair I had for the tout ensemble that went with 
my new tall-hat ; the only pair that went with a frock 
coat of the vintage of 1899 ; the only pair of pants in 
London, and the guests hammering on the door with 
theater tickets in their hands. What did I do ? Neces- 
sity is the mother of safety-pins. I pulled the pants 
up and took four cleats across the western front. I 
looped up eleven yards across the Rhine ; I turned them 
up around the bottoms; I drew in the jibsheet and 
furled the mizzen-mast of "them pants." I laid away 
yards and yards of slack in the dome of "them pants." 
I pulled them flat over the abdomen but the conceal- 
ment in the rear beat the rubbish in a back-alley. I held 
the waistband of "them pants" in my teeth while I took 
up plaits in the region of the pocket. I had to stand on 
a chair to get into the watch-pocket of "them pants." I 
could have rented the ell and a couple of furnished flats 
in "them pants" and then had enough of "them pants" 
left to build a Y. M. C. A. block. Once I fell into them 
and almost smothered to death. If I put both hands 
into the pants pocket at the same time, I caught myself 
stealing money. I could have put all my baggage and 
a hair mattress in the seat of "them pants" and then 
had more room than there is in a union station. If I 
had happened to have fallen down in them, I would 
have crawled out of the leg. 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 101 

But I wore 'em. I had to, and as I buttoned my 
vest over the top of the pants and stepped jauntily into 
the midst of the waiting throng of friends, I felt like 
William H. Taft. We passed thru many adventures 
that evening. I sat on safety pins ; I looked down into 
the bosom of my vest and saw the hem of "them pants" 
slowly rising to engulf me, and then I took a walk. 
Three times I narrowly escaped having my tall hat 
pushed off by rising of the pants. Once the hem got 
into a cup of tea that we were taking with the ladies — 
sort of dropped over into the nectar. Once I looked 
behind me on Piccadilly and the pants were chasing me 
like a trail of crime. Once in a London club, they 
picked up several safety pins where I arose. 

All things end. I came home to my room at two 
a.m. My room-mate, who had been elsewhere, sat 
there. He weighed three hundred and four. He had 
one leg in the seat of a pair of pants. Said he : "Who in 
hell packed a little boy's pants in my bag ? Who in the 
name of Tophet has built me a pair of trousers, age 
seven years? I got into these about an hour ago, to 
try them on, and say ! They aren't fit for publication. 
If I had that dam tailor — " 

But why pursue the subject. I had been dragging 
the seat of his new trousers all over London and he had 
been trying to strangle himself in mine. London never 
knew the secret; but they date certain things in Lon- 
don from the advent of "them pants," just the same. 



ON "PITCHING QUATE' 




HEY are at it again, pitching quoits down on a 
pretty little street not far from our house — 
just a neighborhood affair, with a lot of 
Scotch blood mixed into it, thru their fore- 
fathers. There are MacPhersons and Grants 
and Fergusons and, now and then, one hears 
a round of the Hieland in the comment. 

And so, when the sun begins to lengthen the shad- 
ows and the game is nearing the final rounds, it is a 
pleasure to go over — to sit on the doorstep among the 
mothers and the sisters who are there ; watch the gladi- 
ators swing the discus and see it sail in parabola thru 
the air to settle near the pin ; to hear the exclamations 
of the players and to join in the stress and the vigor 
of the game. 

There is more in quoits than you think. It is not 
merely pitching rings or horseshoes. It is a game, 
with ancestry and traditions. It is old as the language 
— and older. It is likely that Noah and his boys played 
the game on dry land after the Ark settled and the clay 
ariund the door was just right, soft enough to have the 
quoit settle fair and soft in place. Its derivation is 
suggestive. It comes from a word, "coiter," to "press 
on." And that word comes from the Latin "coagere" 
from "co" meaning together, and "agere," to lead. Is 
it not fine? To press on; to lead together; in other 
words "to carry on!" The watchword of the boys in 
the trenches ; the symbol of a Nation that will never be 
licked; never will falter; never will say die until the 
ring is over the pin in far off Berlin ! 

To pitch quoits well (the older men call it "pitching 
quate") one must have certain characteristics that go 
well in business, in life, in the home. A man must have 
strength of arm and of lung. It is a full-bodied game, 
for quoits are no mere trifle to swing strongly and high 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 103 

thru the air, a matter of fifty feet or more. He must 
have judgment. He must have skill. He must have 
wisdom and shrewdness. He must have endurance. 
He must have self-control. Above all he must have the 
power to do what Harry Lauder wants the world to do 
— "Carry on." In other words he must never lose 
heart. 

Only the stout-hearted win at quoits. I like to see 
them struggle when they are behind. If the game be 
nineteen to nine — for instance, and but two points are 
lacking for the leaders to go out and the other side 
spurts and comes up swiftly on them, it takes a strong 
will to maintain that steadiness of eye, that firmness of 
hand to lay the quoit softly up alongside the pin, fifty 
feet away, and never disturb the winning quoit which 
he had thrown before. Oh ! It is fine to see it sail over 
and come to rest in place. And then, too, the chivalry 
of the game! It seems to be proverbial that no one 
shall claim anything — ^but rather concede the claims of 
others. But there are some masterful measurings. 
With excited comment they clip the grasses and apply 
them to the spaces between the quoits and the nearest 
joint of the pin and then they measure the grasses and 
decide in council to whom the point belongs. And 
when the word goes up from the master of the game — 
on it goes as before, happy and hearty. Golf has less 
chivalry, tennis has no more than ancient and honor- 
able quoits. 

So here's to the ancient and honorable game of 
quoits as played by the neighborhood, over beyond my 
house, from supper-time until the curfew rings in the 
2-lorious days of daylight saving. 



ON "THE CLOCK OF THE CENTURIES' 




NE THOUGHT persists with me that I have 
never been able to express effectively, and 
probably I cannot now. It is this: Every 
day that ever passed on earth was the latest, 
the up-to-date day. 

When Noah built the Ark, he undoubtedly 
felt himself a modern. He looked back on Adam as 
ancient history. When Sodom and Gomorrah fell it 
was the greatest calamity that had ever happened. 
The Greeks thought that they had arrived. They 
believed that they had reached the pinnacle and that 
further progress was impossible. They prided them- 
selves on their culture, their religion, their society, their 
art, their learning. They were fin-de-siecle. Their 
dandies were the last word and their theaters and their 
games the triumph of artistic expression. 

Some day, a thousand years hence — what will be 
said of this age ? We have the printing-press, we have 
many electrical discoveries. The air, the seas, under 
the seas, the earth at our control, so far as transporta- 
tion is concerned. How will we stand? Are we 
already old-fashioned with our wars and our brutali- 
ties? 

An eminent professor of history and mathematics 
has enforced the thought by an effort of the imagina- 
tion. He has fancied a gigantic clock that records not 
days, hours, minutes. These are all too small. His clock 
records no space of time smaller than a century. Prof. 
James Henry Robinson of Columbia University reckons 
that man has been on earth about 240,000 years. 
There are many different opinions on this subject, but 
Prof. Robinson's is as good as any. If it be true that 
man has stood erect, tail-less and thinking for himself 
for 240,000 years, each hour on the clock represents 
20,000 years, for we call ourselves now at noon — ^just 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 105 

for the fun of it. Each minute is 300 years. Each 
second is five years. Think of that — a clock which 
ticks a second only once in five years. A clock that 
ticks off a minute only in three centuries ! 

Now how does that clock look? What think you 
happened in the dawn and in the morning hours of the 
slow-moving clock? Absolutely nothing happened up 
to half-past eleven o'clock! It was actually 11.40 a.m. 
before the first record of Babylonian and Greek cul- 
ture appears. Greek Philosophy was born at 11,50. 
And that leaves us only ten minutes for all of recorded 
history. Think of it — only 3,000 years out of the 240,- 
000 of which we know the remotest thing ! It was only 
a little more than 11.56 that the English nation became 
dominated by William The Conqueror. It was only 
two minutes ago that America was discovered. It was 
only two minutes ago that printing from movable type 
was discovered as an art. The United States has been 
a nation less than a minute. 

In short it has been only a minute or so that we 
have actually been awake — as we see it. But the noon 
will move on and on. And each hour will be the latest 
syllable of recorded time and each day will be the last 
word. And each yesterday will rise above our lowly 
graves as old, old, old. When this clock ticks out an- 
other minute and three more centuries have elapsed, 
what will be our place in the world ? Will it stand for 
rehabilitation and progress, or retrogression and de- 
spair? The brave men living and dead on the fields of 
Europe must make answer. They and we, who are 
with them or against them here at home, and the spirit 
of justice, dormant in lands now oppressed by militar- 
ism, must settle the question. 




ON "THE INTOLERABLE" 

N OLD Roman philosopher says, "Don't take 
upon yourself the burden of your whole life 
at any one time, nor form an image of all 
probable misfortunes. In any emergency, ask 
yourself, "What is there intolerable in this ?" 
In other words, it will be better not to bor- 
row trouble and not to look too far ahead into the dark- 
ness. Better make the best of present conditions and 
confront the beast in the woods when you meet him. 
He may not be there ! 

Thus, many people are continually settling ques- 
tions that never come up. Conditions change and the is- 
sue you feared never materializes. It is well to do the 
best you can for today and so order your life that you 
will be in good shape to meet all emergencies, but as for 
conjuring up bogies and fussing over things that you 
are not sure will happen — it is a waste of time. 

For instance, I know a young person who upset two 
households over settling the question whether or not 
the two young people of those households should room 
together in college, a year or so hence. It made a tre- 
mendous fuss. One of them failed to get into college. 
Exit — ^problem ! 

There is a whole lot of value in a certain form of 
procrastination. I don't mean procrastination of im- 
mediate duty. I urge rather the putting off of the 
absolute settlement of many things until they have to 
be settled. I urge this, for in reality, prompt and sen- 
sible judgment is to be made only on the basis of exist- 
ing circumstances, not on the basis of circumstances as 
you fancy they may be at some future time. Prompt 
judgment, wise dealing are best made in the conditions 
of the moment, but it is not possible to settle today a 
state of affairs that may exist next September. Nev- 
ertheless, many people seem to think they are obliged 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 107 

to attempt it. A good many times you never have to 
settle it at all. It settles itself. It is like the tariff. 
We have been trying to settle it for a hundred years. 
Now it is settling itself on the fields of Flanders. But 
don't cross bridges until you come to them. 

And, too, when things are bad you ask yourself, 
"What is there intolerable about this ?" Is not that a 
fine line of advice for us today, considering that it 
comes out of the ages. Suppose that someone had told 
you five years ago that your little high school boy 
would be over in France, in a mud-hole, covered with 
vermin, rats running after him, knee deep in water and 
shot at with poison gases and shrapnel. You simply 
could not have stood the thought. Now, it is not intol- 
erable, is it ? 

There once was a man whose motto was "It might 
have been worse." Once a friend thought he would 
put this chap out of countenance. He could not do it 
easily, so he went to his fancy for material. He ac- 
cordingly pictured to this friend a terrible situation in 
which he had found him in a dream. He had seen this 
hopeful friend in hell. He was suffering every possible 
torture. There was not a single loophole left for the 
poor fellow. It was simply frightful. It was a dream 
of terror. "Now, sir, what do you say to that?" asked 
the man triumphantly. "0, it might have been worse," 
was the reply. "Worse!" echoed the man. "Worse! 
how could it have been worse?" "Easily," replied the 
cheerful one. "It might have been true." 

That's the way with most of our troubles. They 
might have been true and that would have been a lot 
worse than it now is. In suffering and in sorrow it is 
well to remember that we are living in the present 
moment and that each moment that we pass brings us 
so much the nearer to the breaking of the day when the 
suffering shall have been assuaged and the sorrow have 
passed away. 




108 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

Again, "Don't take oxx the burden of your whole life 
at any one time." Under any conditions ask yourself, 
"Is this absolutely intolerable ?" The answer is always 
"No." 



ON "CULTIVATE THE BIRDS" 

T WILL add to your pleasure in life if you learn 
a few specialties of the out-doors. For in- 
stance, suppose you study botany, or birds, or 
trees ! 

There is a woman in a responsible position 
in a Lewiston Savings Bank of whom I am 
thinking as an example. You would not know from 
her casual conversation that she had recently issued a 
book on the birds of Lewiston-Auburn. Her life is 
broadened and made happier by her love of birds, fields 
and woods. She says: "My first step in ornithology 
was taken while studying botany when I heard the her- 
mit thrush." She will tell you that it has made her life 
quite all over; given her abiding interest in the out- 
doors ; there is a fascination about it, quite overpower- 
ing. She quotes Dr. Van Dyke: "I put my heart to 
school, in the woods where veeries sing and brooks run 
clear and cold, in the fields where the wild flowers 
spring." I wish I were young again. I would learn as 
much as I possibly could about the birds, the wild flow- 
ers and the trees. Then I could have a share in what 
John Burroughs, Henry Van Dyke, Henry D. Thoreau 
and Chapman and many others have enjoyed — all hid 
from me, except in a general way. 

And so I envy the quiet little woman who can go out 
of a summer dawn into the fields and woods just to hear 
the bird-song. Every liquid note, that falls on her 
ear, tells a story to her. To me they are nothing but 
the sweet chorus of a dawn. To her each note tells the 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 109 

story of the little singer. She sees the bird, in her 
mind's eye. It is one of God's creatures singing to 
Him as sings the white-throated sparrow. "O ! happi- 
ness, happiness, happiness." If I could name the way- 
side flowers and tell the birds by their songs, I should 
feel better about it. And if I were a youth, I would not 
let the opportunity pass. *T go out in the fields," 
writes Thoreau, "to see what I have caught in the traps 
which I set for facts." He looked to fabricate an epit- 
ome of nature — we do not attempt so much. Profes- 
sor Stanton of Bates went a-field on bird-walks because 
he loved the birds and because he loved God, his Father 
and the Maker of all good things. Thoreau was of the 
same school. "I never felt easy until I got the name 
of Andropogon (a certain kind of grass). I was not 
acquainted with my beautiful neighbor, but since I 
knew it was the andropogon, I have felt more at home 
in my native fields." The farmer who could find him 
a hawk's egg or give him a fisher's foot he would wear 
in his heart of hearts, whether called Jacob or not. He 
saw a deep-world under foot. He believed the earth to 
be kind. He preached God in the living thing — free, 
full of song and full of beauty. How many times have 
I quoted this passage from Thoreau which seems to me 
to be perfect: "We are rained on and snowed on with 
gems. What a world we live in ! Where are the jewel- 
ers' shops ? There is nothing handsomer than a snow- 
flake and a dew-drop. I may say that the Maker of the 
world exhausts his skill with each snow-flake and dew- 
drop that he sends down. We think that the one 
mechanically coheres and that the other simply flows 
and falls; but, in truth, they are the products of en- 
thusiasm, the children of an ecstasy, finished with the 
Artist's utmost skill." 

And so, I am going — all along in these talks, so long 
as they continue — every now and then to preach the 
same sermon! Cultivate some avocation out-of-doors 



110 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

in the fields, among the birds, along the brooks, within 
sound of the manifold voices of God ! Do it now. This 
is not a world of matter. It is not bounded by the 
Hohenzollerns on the North, the Hapsburgs on the 
south, the Romanoffs on the east and the Wilson- 
McAdoos on the west. This is a world of spirit, beauty, 
love, kindness. The resurrection is to come not out of 
the reeking tube of the big Bertha, but out of the 
throat of the birds and from the perfume of the fields. 
I would rather be like the little woman over in the 
Androscoggin County Savings Bank in Lewiston — Miss 
Miller by name — with what she knows of birds, than 
be a ruler with a throne, built on the bodies of those 
who were innocent. For the road to happiness and 
peace triumphant is to come by the way of the fields 
leading smilingly to happy homes. 



ON "YOU NEVER CAN TELL TILL YOU TRY" 

NE DAY back in the beginning of time, a man 
stood by the bank of a river. He saw the 
fish a-swimming. Said he to himself, "Why 
hath the Lord denied to man the right to 
swim ?" And he heard a voice out of the sky 
saying, "How do you know that man cannot 
swim? You never can tell till you try." 

And so man swam. And so man has burrowed in 
mines. And so man has ventured out on the sea in 
boats. And so man has made iron swim on the seas in 
ships. And so he has gone down under the sea in sub- 
marines. And so he has beaten the birds, flying faster 
than the eagles. 

It is not so much of the result as of the impulse, 
that I would speak. It is of smaller importance that 
man flies against the sun, than that he should believe 
that nothing is impossible until proven such. It is more 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 111 

to the purpose that we try than that we succeed. Fail- 
ure may fortify us. We shall learn by trying. But if 
we never try, we surely shall never succeed and shall 
never have an average of accomplishment. 

Thanks be to the Lord! The world has had cer- 
tain men who have never believed in the impossible. 
They saw what the world needed and set about to sup- 
ply the need. Experience — which is very blind as a 
rule — said : "It never has been done. There is a law of 
physics that makes it impossible. You will be wasting 
your time." But these men said, " I am not so sure. 
You never can tell till you try." It was proven in- 
contestably that men could never conquer the air. 
The specific gravity of solids was such and such as com- 
pared with air! The lifting power of air-planes was 
such and such! The Idea! Nonsense! It could not 
be done. I could find you many absolute — and obsolete 
— proofs that machines never could be made that would 
fly. But Prof. Langley and Wright Brothers and a 
few others said, "You never can tell till you try." 
And now we dip and dive in the ether like the hawk and 
swallow. 

If you want to read a book that will put gumption 
into you in respect to trying to do things that scientists 
and wise men say are impossible, read Samuel Smiles' 
"Life of George Stephenson." Here was an uneducated 
man. He could not read until he was mature. He 
mended shoes and repaired clocks and tended the 
engine at the pit-mouth in the collieries in Northum- 
berland. The coals were hauled on wooden or iron 
rails by horses. Stephenson believed that they could 
be hauled by what we now call the locomotive. The 
scientists said it was impossible. The capitalists said 
it was impossible. But Geordie Stephenson said, "You 
never can tell till you try." Read the story of that 
life. Read how he took up the impossibles and solved 
them. Read how this unlearned man actually invented 



112 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

the arts of locomotive-building, of railroad construc- 
tion ; how he flung the iron rails over morasses ; how he 
pierced mountains in deep tunnels ; how he constructed 
the locomotive against parliament and the mobs of 
English farmers protesting that it would blast the 
crops and spread famine thru the land. It will put the 
pep into you. It will make you believe — if nothing else 
will make you. 

How can any man today dare say that anything in 
the physical world is impossible? Let him consider 
the Marconi wireless, the phonograph, the Atlantic 
cable, the newspaper-press, the aeroplane, the subma- 
rine, the mariner's compass! With the mysterious 
power of radium in the offing, who shall say that there 
will not be found new fields of wonder and achievement 
that today we do not glimpse, much less explore? We 
are like children in a palace of illusions! What we 
think are real are but appearances, what we think are 
fixed laws, may be nothing of the sort. If thirty years 
ago a person had told you that you would see the day 
when you could photograph a man's liver thru his body, 
without taking the said liver out and hanging it on a 
nail, you would have said "go to." Surest thing that 
ever was — "you never can tell till you try." 

So if I were a boy, and looked out on the world and 
saw things that the world needed — either as Edison, or 
as Joan of Arc, or as Billy Sunday, or as Michelangelo, 
or as Gutenberg or any other deliverer or helper 
of the race, I never would say, "It can't be done." 
Rather should I say, "You never can tell till you try 
and I am going to TRY." And it is this spirit that is 
fortifying the world today. We are doing things today 
that we never knew we could do until we tried — and 
all of them bringing mankind to higher levels thru 
effort that purifies and uplifts. 




ON "THAT'S THE BOY OF IT" 

E WERE reading this from our old philoso- 
pher: "Your time is almost over, therefore, 
live as though you were on a mountain. 
Never run into a hole or shun company." 

And then the man at the other desk in the 
office said, "That old Roman never went 
camping out, did he?" 

This accords with what is happening in my back- 
yard. The boys across the way came over the other 
night and asked, "Please may we put up our tent in 
your back yard? We will be quiet and won't make no 
noise nor nothin'." 

"Go on," says I. "May you be happier than I ever 
was, living in a tent". And the tent is up and I can 
hear mysterious sounds from it and see boys crawling 
out of it with wooden bowie-knives in their teeth and 
with red paint on their faces. 

There comes a time in every boy's life when he 
wants to live in a tent. Nobody knows what stirring 
of nomadic blood leads them to this desire. It prob- 
ably dates back to pre-historic ages when our forebears 
lived in tents. It is the call of the wild in the boy. 
But they are sure to have it and if repressed, it does 
harm. If a boy in my neighborhood wants to tent out 
and will agree to do it near home, he has my consent. 
Don't bother him. Let him have his fill. He will en- 
joy home the better, afterward. 

You remember, perhaps, when you went camping 
out with some other boy. You talked about it for a 
month, yea, a year. You got a tent and worked like a 
little Injun to get money to have your belongings 
hauled to some convenient camping ground and you 
were dumped down with the world before you. A tent 
averages to be the hottest place in mid-day and the 
coldest place at midnight with two exceptions — hell 



114 JUST TALKS ON COMMDN THEMES 

and the north-pole. And it always rains. And some- 
one always tells the boys to build a trench around the 
camp and they do and the trench fills up and backs up 
into camp and floats the bedding, and the green snakes 
crawl in and the earwigs and the ants want to go camp- 
ing out and the noises are something awful nights. 
Every lion and tiger in the State of Maine comes prowl- 
ing around and the rains are simply bitter. And the 
beans sour — nice beans that you were going to fall back 
on when game got scarce — and your matches get wet 
and you can't seem to get along without milk and cream 
and you are somewhat homesick. And the mosquitoes 
are thick and you want to go home and can't, because 
you were going to stay a week anyway. And you get a 
cold in your head and your feet are wet and then the 
man, on whose land you are camping, comes down and 
asks you who in thunder ever gave you permission to 
camp on his land, and asks you if that is you who has 
been shooting a pistol at his cows, and tells you his 
charge is ten dollars for camping privileges anyway, 
and to fork over, and you have only eighty cents be- 
tween you. 

And your chum proves to have a bad temper and 
yours is no better, and you sit there crying into the wet 
pillow and you hear a voice outside and it sounds like 
Dad's, and he is saying, "Here they are, Joe ;" and it IS 
Dad and your chum's Dad come over to see how the 
bold hunters are getting along. 

"Well, boys," says Dad, "isn't this the fine place! 
Just getting to feel like home, I suppose? Fixed up 
nice and cosy, eh! Well! Well! This is great isn't 
it, Joe ?" And they stay around a while and talk about 
coming over again next week to see you. And you feel 
like death until Dad says, "Of course, if you rather 
come home now and come over again and have another 
week some other time, say the word and we'll tote yer 
home." 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 115 

And two weak little voices echo, "I guess that would 
be fine and dandy all right." And two happy boys 
bundle into Dad's arms and sleep all the way home. 
And that's the Boy of it. 



ON "AUTOING WITH A CHEERFUL MAN' 




E CAME up from Boothbay Harbor, Monday 
morning, in an automobile with a cheerful 
friend at the wheel. 

It had rained the night before, in torrents. 
The clouds had parted and the floor of heaven 
had cracked and let all of its waters down 
upon the earth. But the day dawned clear. The sun- 
light was upon the earth on Monday morning, the wind 
was in the West, the buttercups were bright and the 
sweet-grass pelted you with perfume all along the way. 
Nothing much was said about the trip until we left 
Brunswick. Of course there was mud and peculiarly 
sticky. And this quiet period affords opportunity to in- 
troduce the cheerful friend at the wheel. Last spring 
he was generally known as the Honorable Thomas 
C. White, candidate for mayor of Lewiston, but now, 
as in the erstwhile, we call him Tom. And it is a priv- 
ilege to drive with him. If the sun happened not to be 
shining, you would not miss it with him at the helm. 

We came up from Brunswick by the way of South- 
west Bend. We wanted to see the old pastoral lands of 
the early settlers. We wanted to breathe the perfume 
of the scented fields of Durham. We wanted to see 
the broad domain of aboriginal life when the pioneer 
came home from church with his back full of Injun ar- 
rows and most of the Fitzs and the Tylers and the 
Dingleys went around minus their scalp-locks. We 
wanted to be out under the umbrageous — that's the 



116 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

word — elms whose low-sweeping limbs should brush 
our fevered brows. 

But, somehow, we had not thought of Tom. And 
as for "fevered brows" — well, an ordinary man would 
have gotten fever not only in his brow but also in the 
seat of his pants in that drive. I have mentioned that 
it had rained the night before. And one of the places 
that was not slighted by the rain was this stretch of 
road from the frontier of Durham to the rippling 
region of Garcelon's Ferry. And along here the road 
which was built by the Injuns has never been inspected 
since. It lies in a hollow all of the way and lovely trees 
are hanging over it. Part of it is sandy ; much of it is 
rocky ; all of it was afloat. Now, I would not bother to 
give any account of an ordinary trip over a muddy 
road, even on a sunny day. It would be commonplace. 
But did you ever ride over a road like that which I have 
but feebly indicated, with a driver in his own car, when 
he was sunshine all the while? Did you ever see a 
driver bounce up in the air out of a hidden rut, sail up 
over the limb of an elm-tree, come down in his seat 
right side up and grab the wheel again and never lose 
a laugh? Did you ever see a driver bury the nose of 
his car so far in the mud that it choked the horn, and 
not hear him swear? Did you ever sit in the back of 
a car and see the rain-washed road spring up at you ; 
sweep up over the wind-shield in a flood, like the waves 
from the prow of a battleship, and filling the driver's 
eyes with muddy water, emerge amid "three cheers 
and a Hooray" from the front seat! Did you ever 
cross bridges where there were none and climb hills 
that had been washed away, and ford running brooks 
and sweep thru ponds and all of the time, the driver of 
the car doing athletic stunts on the wheel that beat 
the trapeze artists of the John Robinson circus? 

That was Tom. And just as sunny about it as tho 
it were all in the day's work. A joke here, a smile 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 117 

there. A jest for the rough and a compliment for the 
smooth. 

My moral — Happy the man who takes the bumps 
with a cheerful disposition. Blessed be he. Long life 
and many of them to the cheerful man at the wheel, 
wherever he may be. And live a thousand years, never 
will I forget that happy day, that might so easily have 
been made miserable but for Tom. And never will I 
cease to praise the glorious gift of making the best of 
things. 



ON "TRUNDLE BEDS" 

UR OLD friend, E. P. Ricker, of Poland Spring, 
was in this office a few days ago, talking 
about the days when they charged from $2.50 
to $3.50 a week for board at the Mansion 
House at Poland Spring, and he said that per- 
haps it was enough, for the roof leaked and 
they had only a few rooms and a good many in a room. 
That was many, many years ago, when the first adver- 
tisement of Poland Water appeared in the Brunswick 
Telegraph, and the first circular was issued on Poland 
Water. 

"I remember," said Mr. Ricker, "that I was sleeping 
on a trundle bed, and — " 

Here is the place to stop quotation and ask a few 
questions. How many of our readers ever saw a 
trundle bed? How many know what a trundle bed is 
and why it got its name ? 

I can remember how a trundle bed looked, but I 
never slept in one and we never had one in the house, 
altho there was one at grandmother's house. Yet I sup- 
pose a good many of our readers will remember them 
and many have slept in them. They were little, low bed- 




118 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

steads for children, and of tremendous economy. They 
were called "trundle" because they could be trundled 
about the room and because it was the custom to slip 
them under the tall four-posters during the day-time 
so as to be out of the way. Those were the days when 
a sleeping-room was not exclusive. Few rooms, in 
spite of all of the land outdoors on which to build, was 
the custom ! People slept in innocence and purity, sev- 
eral in a room. So when night came, out came the 
trundle bed from its nice, sanitary retreat under the 
family bedstead and all the household turned in, hig- 
gledy-piggledy ! 

The old-fashioned bed was a terrible thing — come 
to think of it. It is a wonder how they ever lived — our 
grandfathers and grandmothers — to such ripe old age 
without "influenza," and the grip, the pip and the tee- 
bees. The old-fashioned four-poster was as snug as a 
linen-closet in an August afternoon on the sunny side 
of a house with the thermometer at a hundred and ten. 
On going to bed in winter they used to warm up a bed- 
pan, shut the windows, wind the clock, call in the cat, 
lock the shed door, put a log on the fire, tuck in the 
children, put on a flannel night-cap, get out the bed- 
steps, draw the bed-curtains, climb to the level of the 
bed, enter the sanctuary, sink about eleven feet into a 
feather bed and, pulling the curtains close about them, 
shut out any vagrant air and sink into pleasant dreams 
— no doubt. Night-air was accounted noxious, on ac- 
count of the carbonic acid gas let out by vegetation. 
We used to hear so much about plants reversing the 
order of their exhalations after dark, that we used to be 
afraid of being caught out after sun-down for fear of 
being poisoned. They were wary folk — those old- 
timers. 

But they survived it and so did the boys, sleeping in 
the trundle-beds, about four inches from the floor, 
where drafts ran around and the mice frolicked. To 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 119 

see three large, awkward boys, anywhere from six feet 
to seven feet long, inhabiting one trundle bed while pa, 
marm and two or three children inhabited the four- 
poster, was to see economy of space combined with 
dreamless sleep. You could hear those boys growing 
thru the night. 

Trundle beds have gone, along with the old-fash- 
ioned side^board cradle with its wooden rockers, rat- 
tling a lullaby along the yellow-painted kitchen floor — 
mother's toe agitating it as she knit the socks or spun 
the yarn with the flying wheel. How many people have 
seen a grandmother spinning in the twilight of the 
evening by the firelight in an old-fashioned kitchen? 
I used to see a grandmother serenely doing this and 
smoking her pipe at the same time, innocently and 
sweetly — sanctifying tobacco in the purity of her life 
and the religion of her deep and abiding Faith. And 
how many have agitated the churn — the old dasher 
churn, when the butter refused to come; when good 
fishing waited outside with allurement for the im- 
patient boy! 

Times have changed and customs, also! Other 
things have gone with the trundle bed — some good, 
some bad. But what abideth is memory of the dearly 
beloved. We sat with them in the twilight, often, in 
blessedness of love. And angels' wings brushed our 
faces, tho we knew it not. 




ON "PROGRESS AND WONDER" 

LL THE WHILE that man fights man, in the 
world-struggle, a similar drama is going on 
in all animal life. Everywhere we see the 
unfolding of it, struggle between mates, 
struggle between rivals, and on the other 
hand we see love and growth. 

It makes us wonder if we even faintly see the light 
in this world of wonder. If we should talk over what 
we ourselves have observed about animal behavior we 
would come to a common-ground of agreement that 
animals live on a scale of intelligent deportment that 
is, to say the least, a close resemblance to our own, and 
from it should take courage for the future. 

Take the wonderful thing known as migration of 
birds. I have been reading in one of Prof. J. A. 
Thompson's lectures about the marvels of bird migra- 
tion. They almost pass belief — how they make their 
long journeys at night with unabating speed ; how they 
cross pathless seas ; how they return to the very garden 
in which they nested the year before; how the young 
birds that never migrated before, set off alone and wait 
not for those who have gone before, but "change their 
season in a night and wail their way from cloud to 
cloud down the long wind." 

Or take, as this writer says, as another instance, the 
life history of the common European eel. It begins 
life below the 500 fathom line on the floor of the deep 
sea — in a dark, cold, calm, silent, plantless world. It 
passes to the surface as a flattened larva, quite trans- 
parent, and it lives in the open sea for over a year, not 
eating anything and growing rather smaller as it 
grows older., It becomes a young eel or elver, as it is 
called, which makes for the shore and journeys up the 
rivers. In spring or early summer, legions of these 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 121 

elvers pass up stream, obedient to their instinct to go 
right ahead as long as the light lasts. Before reaching 
such rivers as flow into the Eastern Baltic, the young 
eels have had a journey of fully 3,000 miles; for all of 
the eels of Northern Europe seem to have had their 
cradle in the Atlantic west of the Faroes, the Hebrides, 
Ireland, and Spain, where the continental plateau 
shelves deeply down to the great, silent depths. As 
the elvers pass up the streams, there is a separation of 
the sexes. The females go ahead farther up the 
streams; the males lag behind. Then follows a long 
period of growth in slow-flowing reaches of ponds and 
rivers. After some years of this new life, they all 
make the return journey to the sea and as far as is 
known, the individual-life ends in giving origin to new 
lives. There is never any breeding in fresh water; 
there seems to be no return for any eel from the deep 
sea — ^nothing but the succession of the coming elver 
and the departing eel, his life finished. 

And all this goes on in spite of man and his petty 
wars. The impulse that sends the bird to the south 
and back again in summer to the north; the impulse 
that controls the migration of the European eel and all 
similar impulses are apparently sempiternal. We have 
as yet not the smallest conception of the ruling im- 
pulses of the world. We are all too apt to consider 
things solely from the standpoint of Man, and he is only 
a very small part of creation and by no means the most 
wonderful. The body of an ant is many times more 
visibly intricate than a steam-engine. Its brain, as 
Darwin said, is perhaps the most marvelous speck of 
matter in the universe. Scientists say that in a tiny 
organism no larger than the second hand of a watch 
there is a molecular intricacy that might be repre- 
sented by an Atlantic liner packed with such watches. 

Now — bear this in mind as the thought of this Talk. 
The word of all nature is Progress. There has never 



122 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

been an instance yet of retrogression in the system. 
Individuals and some types come and go — ^but the 
world plan is Progress. We do not know; cannot un- 
derstand as yet what is the secret of Life, what is its 
destiny, but the person who sees the birds come and go, 
who knows of such mysterious influences as those 
which control the elver in his 3,000 mile journey to a 
place unseen hitherto, but unerringly found, cannot 
doubt that Man will find with the same unerring 
course, the Haven — which is a Heaven, somewhere. 
In the meantime let us wonder and wonder — for it is 
the spur to knowledge and the staff of faith. 



ON "FUSSING ABOUT THE WEATHER" 

T SEEMS as tho a lot of time is wasted in fuss- 
ing about the weather — especially in New 
England. Many people put in a deal of time 
in going about complaining that it is too hot 
or too cold. 

The Professor just went out. He said, 
"how in timenation can you keep on working along here 
in this heat. I have been home and down cellar with 
an electric fan going and the longer I stayed the hotter 
it got and I had to come out and get relief by seeking a 
little human sympathy. DID you ever see a hotter 
day?" Now it happened to be Tuesday, July 23, ther- 
mometer 95 degrees Fahr. The weather had not oc- 
curred to me. I was busy. If I went down cellar and 
thought nothing but heat and considered nothing but 
the thermometer, I might have kicked up a fever in the 
blood. But what's the use ? 

I hear some one say, "Oh, but if you were in a real 
hot place and working like other folks, you would have 
to fuss. Well — it is under the roof where I am work- 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 123 

ing ; and I have been thumping this typewriter steadily 
since 8 a.m. and it is now 5 p.m., and there are linotype 
machines across the way ; and a pot of 2,500 lbs. of hot 
metal belching out heat, and no window near me and 
my electric fan loaned to the proof-readers and yet I 
perspire peacefully. I simply am not going to fuss 
about what I can't help. If there is any philosophy 
about that you are welcome to it. I have no copyright 
on it. 

And there is not much use in fussing about things 
you cannot help. The weather comes in assortments 
that sometimes are not what you would order. But I 
suppose that if left to a committee of citizens to pick 
out the weather, we would have more or less difficulty 
in getting them to serve a second term. Jones would 
want rain on his street to lay the dust and Brown would 
want sunshine for his picnic, both at the same time. 
Wilson would want it cool so he could mow his lawn and 
Jencks would want it hot so that his corn would ripen. 
My friend. Sawyer, would want a long spell of rain to 
fill his dams at the head of the river, and my friend 
Davis would want a long spell of dry weather so that he 
could build a coffer-dam for a river improvement. I 
suppose that some people would want summer in win- 
ter because they are home during winters and would 
want winter in summer so as to save coal. 

So what is the use of fussing. Can't help it ! That 
is the only decent answer as the perspiration runs and 
the B. V. D. becomes a wet blanket on enjoyment. But 
it can be done — as I have said before. You can per- 
spire in silence and not go raving around shouting 
"Gee ! Did you ever see the like of it. Thermometer 
ninety-five. Hottest day of the season." You can at 
least keep quiet about it and let others forget it, if they 
can. You need not assert that it looks like another hot 
day "termorrer." You need not insist on sweating in 
other people's presence. You need not parade your 
suffering and mopping. 



124 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

The happiest people in a hot-spell are those who are 
the busiest. The best scout of all is the chap who goes 
right on and does his bit in spite of the weather. He is 
a real soldier. They say that in the approach to the 
battlefields it is often hot and dusty — especially dusty. 
They say that sometimes it is so hot and so dusty that 
men fall unconscious. But they have no thermometers 
and as they do not know how hot they really are, they 
do not suffer very much. They laugh and joke and 
hunt cooties and drive on. The thermometer is a great 
waster of time. It makes folks discontented with the 
atmosphere. It induces invidious comparisons. If 
we had no thermometers we should have fewer people 
who felt hot in summer and cold in winter. Lots of 
people never know it is cold in winter until they see the 
thermometer. 

Don't be a traveling thermometer. 



ON "BEING THE WHOLE THING" 

RE you one of those business men who think 
that nobody else can do your work; that the 
business would stop if you went away for a 
few days? If so, mend your ways. If you 
are running the business that way, it is time 
for you to reorganize. No business should 
be at the mercy of one man. 

Here is a true story. When the United States 
Steel business was re-organized and every one in Pitts- 
burgh became a millionaire over night, by the forma- 
tion of the gigantic United States Steel corporation, it 
happened that there was a man in the open-hearth 
steel plant who had been there many years and who 
was a faithful and efficient boss of his expert and 
highly intricate work. 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 125 

In the sudden down-pour of riches, the happy offi- 
cials thought of this man, and, seeking to reward him 
for his share in the success, they called him into the 
office, gave him a lot of money and told him that he 
had earned a vacation. "Go abroad a year," said they, 
"Your pay will go on as before on a big advance. Look 
over everything in steel-construction and steel-manu- 
facture. Have a good time. Rest up and enjoy your- 
self." 

The man went away and stayed six months. He had 
always been a worker ; never a loafer. He had been a 
powerful, dominant man who attended strictly to busi- 
ness every day of the year, no vacations. He became 
restless, in Europe ; he could stand it no longer ; he set 
sail for home and one day stepped into the main-office 
of the U. S. Steel Co. and said: "How's things going?" 

The manager looked up and said, "Rotten. Nobody 
here knows how to make open-hearth steel as it should 
be made. We have lost thousands and thousands of 
dollars by your absence." 

"Gimme my overalls!" shouted the happy man, 
"I'm going back to work in three minutes." 

"No, you are not," said the manager. "You are 
going back to Europe and stay there for the rest of 
your vacation. No one man is ever again going to put 
the U. S. Steel Co. in the hole that you have left it in. 
No man ought to run a department so that his assistant 
can't run it as well as he did. The measure of a man's 
efficiency in a department is results, both when he is 
there and when he is not. If his assistants can do the 
work better than he can, it goes to his credit ; he has 
picked the men ; he has taught them. We want no seg- 
regation of expertness in any one individual. In short, 
the excellence of a manager, is the degree to which he 
can disappear for brief seasons and return to find it 
running smoothly. We do not want the U. S. Steel Co. 
to shut down because, some bad day, you overeat and 
die." 



126 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

This does not mean that business-men are not to 
attend to business. But what it does mean is that 
their efforts at running business must be directed in 
large affairs to man-selection and the proper apportion- 
ing of responsibility upon them. Hold them for re- 
sults. Stand like Foch at the guidance and depend on 
men who shall have every opportunity to learn; on 
them shall be, under your larger guidance, the issue of 
success. 

And bear this in mind, you will lose your punch if 
you permit yourself to go stale. To this end, frequent 
change, occasional variation of work, average number 
of vacations — all these are essential. A day or two in 
the open, out where bigger things than have ever devel- 
oped in your factory are going on — out by the sea, or 
on the mountain top — all of these are required. Put 
the punch into yourself and into your assistants by con- 
sideration of the human need for rest and recreation. 
And don't forget that you are not — or should not be 
indispensable to the degree that the business will suf- 
fer if you leave your desk for a few weeks in summer. 
Forget it. You are not the whole business unless the 
business can do very nicely in your absence. The 
system should be bigger than the individual. 




ON "BEAUTY OF THE WORLD" 

E have talked together — if perchance I have 
any readers — about beauty, feeling as I do, 
that it is deeper than the surface and a 
part of a divine plan. For Beauty, as I take 
it, is a foreshadowing on earth of the ulti- 
mate development of mankind after death, an 
earthly beatitude, expressed in form. 

So Beauty is no mere accident of form and habit. 
It is as a phrase in the infinite harmonies, a movement 
in the song of the heavenly chorus, heard a little in 
advance. It is brother to Truth and Justice, it is per- 
fection, here and there, displayed. It is an echo of the 
rhythm that moves in and thru all creation. The omni- 
presence of beauty in all finished and normal life, must 
have some meaning. Even if it signify nothing more 
than that it arouses something within us that responds 
pleasurably to nature — that is worth while. "Thou 
hast ordered all things in measure and number and 
weight ! Thou hast made all things beautiful, in their 
season." 

The whole world is beautiful. Its very beauty 
proves that it could not have come by chance. From 
the crystal to the flower, there is plan and order. The 
sea beating against the shores; the wide stretches of 
the fields; the azure of the skies; the rugged storm 
clouds, built up against an evening sky; the gold of a 
perfect sunset ; the beauty of a dawning day ; the stars 
that sweep overhead at night; the moon, on summer 
seas ; the mountains thrown against a dazzling sky ; the 
silver tips of peaks remote, diamond-studded; the 
sweep of storm thru city streets with eaves groaning 
and night winds sobbing; the brooks that sing along 
the forest paths ; the birds in brilliant colors — what is 
all this prodigal display of perfect loveliness, but the 
work of some Divine influence making this the abode of 



128 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

loveliness, as tlie vestibule to glories yet to be? 

And there is no common thing that hath not its 
loveliness. We brush aside the common weeds, seen 
so often that we do not notice them and yet, if 
we take time some day, when we are sitting by 
some wayside spring, to examine them, we shall find 
them beautiful, intricate, full of individuality. Their 
parts are perfectly correlated and well adapted to their 
surroundings. They have means of protection and of 
development. They are of a race perhaps older than 
our own. We see the bee come to them and find his 
sweet — the beautiful, golden bee adorned in colors that 
do not fade. If we enter into the laboratory of the 
weed, we find beauties of plan, mysteries of evolution 
that fill us with awe. It is true, as the poet says, 
"Little flower! If I could but understand what you 
are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God 
and Man is." 

I do not want this loveliness to escape notice of 
those who read casually the newspaper as it comes and 
goes. Some things are abiding. This earth is not all 
of it. Everything is wonderful if you will but observe. 
*T believe that a leaf of grass is no less than the jour- 
ney-work of the stars," says Walt Whitman, "and the 
pismire is equally perfect; and the grain of sand and 
the egg of the wren ; and a tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre 
of the highest ; and the running blackberry would adorn 
the parlours of heaven ; and the narrowest hinge on my 
hand puts to scorn all machinery ; and the cow munch- 
ing with depressed head surpasses any statue ; and the 
mouse is a miracle enough to stagger sextillions of 
infidels." 




ON "PASTURES" 

ROWN, gray, green or even white with winter 
snow, what is lovelier than a Maine pasture, 
with a knoll on it ! 

And we prefer them, do we not, with a 
pine-tree on that knoll, whispering things 
about strange places with the winds that 
have been everywhere and seen everything. We like 
them also that give glimpses of casual pond or lake so 
that we can lie with our head on a stone, as Jacob did at 
Bethel, and see visions, in the sky and on the shining 
waters. 

A Maine pasture must — simply must — be entered 
by a gate with bars that let down and it should have 
low juniper, granite bowlders, occasional velvety 
patches, a sand-bank, and a familiar path that leads to 
the heights. If it be an "institutional" pasture, so to 
speak, it may have a picnic grove in it. I have such a 
one in mind, called "Bibber's Woods," where a whole 
town went on hot afternoons in summer and looked far 
down into a valley in which a stream wound along like 
a silver ribbon. The cows came up and joined us at 
sunset and nobody ever left the bars down. I suppose 
that the portable saw mill has murdered these living 
trees before this. 

I like a pasture in the spring, when ninety-nine per 
cent of the snow is gone ; when the earth is quite warm 
and when the mayflower is to be found. It takes the 
expert to find the mayflower "down underneath," 
always in certain definite spots, remembered of last 
year, among long grasses in the most hidden places, 
known only to you. They are old friends. But one 
does not go mayflowering if memories are too potent 
and come with tears — curly-headed, fairy-like little 
girl, running about here and there, your companion and 
pal — now alas, too staid and sophisticated at seventeen 



130 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

to go mayflowering with dad. Ah! The visions of 
children with flowing hair, that people every pasture, 
even those by the home fireside. 

We love the pasture for its silences. The swallows 
fly low over the pasture knolls, the bluebird sings upon 
the fence-rail and the drowsy tinkling of the cow-bells 
lulls us to dreams. One can stretch out here in the 
sunshine as on his mother's bosom. The sunlight, thru 
ash and poplar, filters in over our pastures of New Eng- 
land as nowhere else. Mere fields are stubble ; forests 
are obscure and mystic. The presence of the Lord is in 
the deep woods; but out here the angels of peace and 
the good fairies seem to play, and they draw light out 
of the west and run with it helter-skelter over the 
knolls and into the valleys. One can hardly despair in 
a pasture, whatever his memories. It is too bright and 
open for despair. 

I like the pastures even in winter. The snow blows 
over them and lays them as with a white table-cloth. 
It lies in shelving ridges, with edges overhanging and 
overlapped like mother of pearl in the deep sea shell. 
The pines sing louder in winter. There are open tracks 
of the rabbit or fox. . The snow declines to build 
against the trunks of certain trees, for what reason I 
do not know, and often there are bare and dry spots 
where you may sit at your hazard and look abroad. 
There will be a thousand things to see, from grass 
culms to the lichens, glistening in the moist winter 
days. Where the sun beats down you can almost see 
spring stirring — yea, the infinity of springs. 

Maine pastures are incomparably lovely but mostly 
unappreciated. We scarcely know how rare they are. 
How one hungers after them, when away from them. 
Think of the weary sage-brush or the dull, dreary 
stretches of the sea of corn-fields of the West. By the 
side of these the Maine pasture is as elysium. And 
such sunsets ! From a Maine pasture they pick up new 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 131 

glories. The dull earth lends itself to emphasis of 
jades and golds, and especially the upper end of the 
spectrum, carmines and crimsons. As a proscenium, 
even the sea is trivial and the mountain-top is melo- 
drama as compared with the perfect setting of the 
simple pastoral to the watcher of the skies, with pil- 
lowed head upon the knoll beneath the whispering pine 
as the sun sinks slowly down in glory ! 

No wonder the psalmist sang of them — the pas- 
tures of Heaven. "He maketh me to lie down in green 
pastures ; he leadeth me beside the still waters ; he re- 
storeth my soul." 



ON "THINKING TWICE' 




NEVER did a thing in a hurry that I did not 
regret it. Almost everyone has had the same 
experience and, by being in a hurry, does not 
mean having a quickstep, about things — it is 
the mind that you must not hurry! Hurry 
your feet, all you like; so long as feet or 
hands do not outrun the operations of your brains. If 
they do, look out. You are hurrying and must take 
your chances of accident. 

I am tending a furnace. It is not a job that I went 
into the primaries to get. I did not go about telling 
what an all-fired good furnace-tender I was and am. I 
fell into the office by a fancied fitness for it on the part 
of my wife. She decided that here was an office for 
which I was just about suited and she elected me by a 
majority of one vote, my vote "contrary-minded" not 
counting. 

The other night, I decided that the water was low 
in the boiler and that I would fill it. This steam-plant 
is a new one to me. We had not been properly intro- 



132 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

duced. I found the right wheel to turn and turned it 
and went about my other business of piling in the coal 
and then I took out a lead pencil and sat on a barrel 
and began to write a little thing that came into my 
noddle, and then I went out and got an ash-barrel, and 
then I went up-stairs and forgot all about the wheel 
that I had turned and all about the water that was run- 
ning into the boiler, by a one-inch pipe. 

You see I have not hurried, up to this point. To be 
sure, I worked a little ahead of my brain, but then I 
was not hurrying. My brain simply was failing to 
register. It needed a new needle or a fresh record or 
the crank needed to be wound up. Nobody's fault, as 
yet. 

I ate my supper and dawdled. I went down to the 
public library and got a couple of books on Freedom of 
the Seas — forgetting the freedom of the water running 
all of the while into my boiler — I should say, rather, 
into the boiler up to the house, for, if it had been my 
very own boiler, I should have noticed it. I went home 
and sat down by the radiator. Then I heard a sound ! 
A sizzling. Then! Oh, then, I began to hurry. 

Now, if I had not hurried; if I had stopped and 
mopped my brow and recited a few verses of Omar ; and 
drawn up a definite plan of procedure in case of flood, 
it would have been all right. But as a matter of fact, I 
sky-hooted for the cellar as tho a yaller dog (one of Al 
Sweet's) — had had me in a place where I could not fail 
to notice. It was an instant's work to shut off the 
water. I had no plan. The water was oozing out of 
the joints. The fire was beautiful — best fire for weeks. 

Now, if my mind had not hurried in the first place ; 
if I had enjoyed the confidence of a professional, I 
would have known where the pipe was, for drawing off 
the water. I did not. I had hurried my job. My 
feet and hands had outrun my brain and my self-con- 
ceit had outrun both. I accordingly turned a valve in 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 133 

a pipe, hitherto considered useless, and out of it 
streamed a yard of boiling water. After that, all is a 
dream. I drenched in steam; boiled in water and 
stewed in self-abnegation. Then the dammed pipe — 
please notice that this is not swearing — ceased to run. 
I bailed the cellar out and it was eleven o'clock and no 
sign of the recession of water in the glass. It still 
showed chock-full. 

Then I did something again in a hurry. It was 
awful. I took a stilson wrench and took off the pet- 
cock on the water level to make a bigger flow of water. 
You don't know what I did! Neither do I, now. But 
the minute I did it and the water and steam began to 
roar and the water rose on the floor and I began to run 
to and fro leaping to the fray with water buckets of 
scalding water, which I poured on the lawn, I knew 
that I had hurried. For how in the name of Jupiter 
Pluvius, Boiling Hot, was I ever to get the pet-cock 
back. If allowed to run it would empty the entire 
boiler; we should all be blown sky-high. And I could 
not put in a threaded screw against four pounds of 
red-hot steam and forty pounds boiling-water pres- 
sure. I prayed! And the water sprayed also. My 
feet were boiled. My brain was stewed. My hands 
were parboiled. My wits were a ragout. 

Here is my point. I took two minutes off for con- 
sultation with my laggard mind. I called it back into 
my presence — presence of mind, antidote for being in 
a hurry, otherwise being rattled. "The hair of the dog 
is good for the bite," says I; 'T will give her cold 
water." I did. The pipe from the cold ran into the 
hot at a juiiction-point; the water ran cold out of the 
fool vent that I had made; I attacked it with the pet- 
cock and the etilson. 

I draw the veil over the struggle. That water, 
eighty pound pressure, took me in the mouth, the ears, 
up my sleeves, thru the waistcoat, out of the small of 




134 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

my back, thru my liver and into my Spanish Influenza. 
I was Noah with no ark. There was only one comfort ; 
my wife did not see it. But I conquered just before 
sinking into a watery grave. 

MORAL : Think twice before you start anything. 



ON "THE WAYSIDE LILY" 

S YOU go upon the streets on an August day, 
or pass by train thru the towns between Lew- 
iston and Brunswick, you see boys with 
masses of pond-lilies — the loveliest of water- 
flowers, ivory, with hearts of gold, finer than 
the goldsmith ever fashioned. 
Often from the train window, you may see the place 
whence these flowers come. They lie, white in the morn- 
ing sun and glistening with the dew, along the river 
bank, in the Androscoggin River, at Lisbon Falls. 

How many people know that these flowers were 
placed in the river by Edward Plummer of Lisbon 
Falls, who was a big man in his day and who presum- 
ably had "too much business" to bother with "flowers"? 
He built railroads ; ran lumbering operations on the Big 
River; handled crews of men all the way from the 
Magalloway to the boom at Lisbon Falls ; did a big saw- 
mill business and was a dreamer also, conceiving and 
pushing thru the railroad into the heart of the lumber- 
regions of the Rangeleys, years and years ago. 

Mr. Plummer brought the roots of these lilies down 
home from distant ponds and put them in good ground 
in the placid waters by the shore. And there they have 
grown and multiplied and now they gem the green 
shores of the stream and lie out there in all the glory 
of God's own beauty — the suggestion of the utility of 
perfume and of loveliness. 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 135 

We perpetuate our names oftener by the acts of 
thoughtfulness for those who are to come after us, 
than in any other way. The man who plants elms by 
his roadway is of the same school as Mr. Plummer. 
These men do not expect to be remembered but some- 
one sits some day grateful in their shade ; looks up thru 
the branches, hears the birds sing and sees them nest- 
ing in the branches, and he breathes a prayer for the 
soul of the man who planted the tiny tree. Perhaps the 
prayer and blessing reach farther on the way to the 
throne, than prayers bought and paid for in coin, less 
enduring than the lilies of the placid stream and the 
leaves of the spreading elm. 

You recall, somewhere, the wayside spring. You 
stop to lave in its cool waters or drink from its running 
stream. Someone put the bed of the spring there and 
welled it for your refreshment. The birds come and 
drink. The wayside dog laps at the rivulet that runs 
thru the dusty road away from the shade that follows 
the running water. All nature gives thanks. Do these 
fail to reach the throne? Does the little child that 
buries his face in the perfume of the pond-lily ever for- 
get it ? And long years after, possibly, may he not be 
stirred to some childhood memory and some return to 
the simpler things of innocence and virtue by the influ- 
ence of the flower ? 

This is not all bunkum — I believe. The good Lord 
made flowers and running waters and brooks and trees 
to have their sway over human lives. Here and there 
a man lives, who feels these things and practices the 
religion of service to others in the simpler way. He 
leaves behind him, not alone memorials of the material 
things of life, — stocks, bonds, factories and automo- 
biles — but even things that go on living after he has 
gone. The grove of pines that he has saved from the 
portable mill and deeded to the town in perpetuity, 
where tired mothers may go in the hot afternoon and 



136 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

there, with their children beside them in safety, find 
the rest and comfort that otherwise might be denied 
them ; the play-ground of the boys ; the old brook that 
weaves so closely into memory after the weary years 
have fled. 

And so the pond-lily that the boys sell on the 
streets, suggests all this and much more which you 
may add of your own reflection, with the single thought 
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of 
these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me." 



ON "TABLE MANNERS' 




EARS ago it was good form to eat with your 
knife. And there was a reason. It was a 
long advance on the etiquette that insisted 
that "fingers were made before forks." 

It never seems to old-fashioned folk that 
the indictment of the table-knife as a food- 
freighter was well-taken. It was no mean accomplish- 
ment to "eat with the knife." It took dexterity, for in- 
stance, to eat peas with an old-fashioned steel table- 
knife, and a technical aptitude at it was as diflScult as 
playing the piano. Most of my gray-haired readers — 
if I have any left — recall men who had a knife-tech- 
nique that was swift, sure, accurate and profound. It 
always seemed cruel, to their presence, to insist upon 
change of style. Nothing was more beautiful than to 
see a full load of food balanced on a knife in mid-air, 
halted on its way to doom while the artist delayed a bit, 
to discuss with another kindred soul, similarly halting, 
S'lch profound subjects as "The Immortality of the 
Soul" or the details of Predestination. There were 
men in those days who could even gesture with a knife- 
load and never spill a bean. 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 137 

But they have mostly gone, those old experts. The 
few that exist are called sword-swallowers and are 
either ostracised altogether or are eating at the second 
table. The same thing has happened to those who 
drink out of their saucers and go to table in their shirt 
sleeves and drink out of the finger bowls. Years ago, 
it was not simply permissible to drink out of the 
"sasser" — it was an accomplishment. To see a man 
pour his tea into his saucer and cool it off and then lift 
it with firm touch and sip it with a long, soothing, 
sibilant, gurgling, fugue-like cadence that could be 
heard in the next county, was to see and hear the 
proper thing. The louder noise he could make, the 
more desirable dinner-guest he was considered. If he 
wanted to do a little fin-de-siecle flourish, he dipped his 
gingerbread in the tea in his saucer and then played a 
solo in double-bass with it thru his mustache. And 
then if he were a true artist and could wipe his mus- 
tache on his coat sleeve daintily — daintily, mark you — 
without the slightest suggestion of coarseness but with 
that infinite considerateness that betokens the saving 
of napkins, he was worth while; for napkins were 
rarely given out except to the minister. 

I do not think much has been gained by lowering 
the napkin from the chin to the base of the stomach. 
A bishop who wears a raw-silk apron was asked at a 
dinner party where I once was, "What has most im- 
pressed you since you became a bishop?" "Madam," 
he replied, "the one thing that has most impressed me 
since becoming a bishop is the ease with which my nap- 
kin slips out of my lap." All of these things have 
merely taken the freedom out of feeding. It only 
amounts to a greater hardship when by travel or 
adversity or return to frontier conditions, one has to 
eat as men eat in the raw. Of course we have pro- 
gressed in table manners in some respect, since the 
days when the person who could reach farthest, fared 



138 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

best, — ^but not in all respects. The best table manner is 
happiness, and it is to be doubted if we are getting any 
more of that than we did in the old days when there 
was less restraint and more fun. Laugh, joke, have 
fun and frolic — that is the best table manner. A sol- 
emn butler is guaranteed to give the average man 
angina pectoris at the age of fifty. There is no ner- 
vous dyspepsia where there is good humor, no talk of 
business, no silences, no bickerings between husband 
and wife, no repression of the natural sport of child- 
hood, no fault-finding over food. 

I do not deprecate dainty eating. But it makes 
little difference which fork a man uses for spearing his 
oysters. Table-manners are matters of passing fash- 
ion. Neatness, clean-washed faces, clean apparel and 
common decency with happiness go further than much 
flummididdle and many folderols. And best of all — is 
enlightening and diverting talk. Give us that and — 
dear stranger coming to dine with me — you may eat 
with your knife and sip from your saucer, so long as 
you do it as to the table-manner born. 




ON "FRACTIONS HERE AND THERE" 

HERE is just one little red-cheeked, lovable 
girl, eight years old, over against me, and our 
heads are very close together, for she is 
studying fractions, 

Eheu, fugaces labuntur anni! Dear old 
Horace ! The years passed no doubt, swiftly 
away by the side of the cool waters of the Digentia in 
his Sabine Hills, but not more swiftly than to one who 
sits with a girl of two -braids of chestnut hair, conning 
fractions once again. 

Are we in the twilight all together, friends tonight ! 
And do we whose hair is whitened, — others may have 
no interest in this evening's talk — consider the days 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 139 

when "the rule of three perplexes me and fractions 
drive me mad." Did you ever go to a little red-school- 
house ? Did you ever go to a schoolhouse that had any 
paint on it whatever ? Did you ever see the stove fun- 
nel get red-hot? Did you ever see the late afternoon 
shadows lengthen on the blackboard and the sun's last 
rays shine on the very problem that you missed on? 
And was that not a fraction ? There is a boy over in the 
back seat there. Do you know him ? He has hair that 
sticks up desperately over his head. He has a suit of 
clothes that is reminiscent of the Civil War. He has 
warts — mention them not. He has freckles — gold-be- 
spattered spangles of out-door life. He has cow-hide 
boots. He is scratching on a slate. His face is working 
into weird contortions. You do not know him. You 
never can know him. He was a part of you and yet is 
no more. He was of you and with you and you with 
him; but he has gone, with the passing years. You 
lived in him and of him — you know not how — ^but O ! so 
different. You lived with him as a Conqueror! A 
Prince of the Realm ; a Leader of Armies ; the Greatest 
Baseball Pitcher; Proprietor of a Candy Shop; Presi- 
dent of the United States ; the King of Sleuths ; Daniel 
Boone and Nick Whiffles. Is that little lad your 
Fraction or are you his Fraction? 

Fractions are proper, improper, even vulgar. 
Which are you? You owed something to that little 
boy — who has gone with Horace's fleeting years. Do 
you dare to go up to that little boy in the back seat 
there studying fractions and whisper your name into 
his ear and tell him how you have turned out in the 
process of reducing life to the common denominator of 
manhood? Can you take him on your knee — your 
earlier self — with all those dreams, hopes and fancies 
of boyhood greatness and tell him that, all in all, you 
have done your best, lived straight; done your addi- 
tions and your divisions according to rule? Can you 



140 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

truthfully say that, such as you are, you have been fair 
to the little boy and his dreams and that the only 
trouble was that his dreams were too big for you to 
accomplish, because there are but few places nowadays 
for Napoleons ? 

My little girl over opposite me cannot quite under- 
stand why we cannot add a fourth and a fifth together 
without making them twentieths, especially as I trans- 
late all fractions into mince-pie. But she will some 
day. She will learn that, in the great problem of the 
world, it is necessary in adding this fraction of a 
human being to that, this fourth part of a proper man 
or woman to that fifth part of a proper man or woman, 
we must reduce them to the common denominator of 
the human soul. She will know that when we try to 
add one Kaiser to four social democrats, it will be nec- 
essary to find out how much Man there is in each of 
them. Only when she does this will she know what 
the answer to the problem may be. She cannot under- 
stand yet why, if you multiply the denominator and get 
a bigger figure, the fraction grows smaller. 

But she will — some day when she sees a man who 
makes his denominator hoarded dollars — wrung from 
people, sneaked out of circulation and beneficence just 
to make a big bank-balance. She will see how by multi- 
plying his denominator, the fraction of this man be- 
comes smaller and smaller. 

Dear little girl of two braids ! Life has everything 
— ^fractions, units, mixed numbers, proportions; ques- 
tions and answers for you — all waiting. For us whose 
hair is white with years most of the answers are writ- 
ten — all but One ! 




ON "KEEPING A DOG" 

T IS according to how you accent the verb. If 
you really want to keep a dog, why you prob- 
ably can, provided he is the kind of a dog that 
you can keep. Some dogs just wander off, 
and then you are in luck unless your wife in- 
sists on offering a reward. Then you will 
get your dog back and usually two or three more. A 
dog has his times and seasons for wandering. Maybe 
ha is off after a bone. I had a dog once — a woolly-eared 
dog that bit the legs of all thin people, under the im- 
pression, as I always believed, that they were animated 
bones. It was lucky that the dog died, before short 
skirts came. Long skirts cover a multitude of bones. 
This dog of mine disliked the gas man and the man 
who came to take our electric-light meter. He bit 
them regularly — or irregularly; I mean that he bit 
them regularly as they came and irregularly as to place. 
Ha was an intelligent dog and seemed to appreciate his 
duty to me. Even tho mistaken in his methods, he 
plainly sought to relieve me of apparent burdens due to 
gas-bills and electric light bills. If I had had two dogs, 
like him, I might have had one of them biting at the 
back door and one at the front. As it was, well, the 
dog wasted a good many of his bites. 

It is easier to keep two dogs than it is to keep one. 
You do not miss one of them when he is away and you 
are not running around hunting for a dog. And hunt- 
ing for a restless dog is a man's job. The dog may be 
here now and the next hour, he may be there. It would 
take two motor-cycles and a side-car, to keep run of 
some dogs. So, if you can arrange it so that by having 
several dogs, you don't miss one or two of them when 
they fail to come around after their meals, you will get 
along better. 



142 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

Remarks about a dog ruined Pudd'nhead Wilson. 
Said he, "If I owned half of that dog, I would kill my 
half." How could a man own half of a dog and if he 
did, which half would he own? And if he killed half 
of a dog, wouldn't he be killing the other half, too, and 
what good is half of a dog, any way? He's a darned 
fool," said the people of the country village, "a reg'lar 
pudd'nhead." 

Of course there is something about a dog that steals 
into your affection. If you have a real dog it is always 
a question of whether you own the dog or he owns you. 
He comes into the house and muddies the rugs and 
brings in his strange out-of-door suggestions and all of 
the sand in the vicinity and occasional beef-livers and 
odds and ends of neighbors' apparel and a few rare 
insects, but when he snuggles up and puts his nose in 
your hand and looks up with loving brown eyes, you 
rather like him. My dog had a fondness for collecting 
things. His specialty was goloshes. He would bring 
me home an odd overshoe about once a week. He found 
them on door-steps. I tried to train him to bring me 
home a pair of them — even practiced with him in 
teaching him to take up two at once. But he never 
seamed to get the idea. That is where Pudd'nhead 
Wilson comes in. I would have liked to have killed 
that half of my dog. What I wanted was a two-over- 
shoe dog, if I was going to have any. 

Some day, some one will invent a dog that will be 
a satisfactory house dog. I never saw one yet; but 
there will be one, when we have everything safe for 
democracy and dogocracy. I feel it in my bones. 
That dog will never wander from home; he will not 
bark at neighbors' automobiles; he will not engage in 
rough fights ; he will not kill chickens ; he will not catch 
the mange ; hfe will not bite telephone men ; he will not 
have fits ; he will not come in dripping wet and leap in 
the lady's lap; he will not steal out of the pantry; he 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 143 

will not dig up the front lawn ; he will not dig up neigh- 
bors' front lawns; he will not howl when the church 
bell rings ; he will not bury beef -bones behind the par- 
lor sofa; he will not disseminate fleas among the chil- 
dren; he will not go away with pedlers. Apart from 
the few imperfections, a dog is all right now. But 
when McAdoo has more time, we want him and Sam 
Gompers to take up the matter of the dog and make 
him so that any man will as soon have an automobile 
as try to keep a dog. 



ON "MAN'S NECKTIES" 

NECKTIE is a thing of beauty on the bosom of 
a man. 

I am wrong and will begin again — a neck- 
tie is a butterfly under a man's chin. On 
thinking the definition over carefully, it yet 
seems open to criticism — ^there are few white 
butterflies and almost none that are black. A necktie 
is a tie for a man's neck. Let it go at that ; only it is 
not for his neck, at all. It is for his shirt-front and 
his neck sticks up above it, like a sore thumb out of a 
bandage, and his Adam's apple wears the nap off of it 
and there is no real connection between a necktie and a 
neck except certain neighborly proximity. And you 
can't tie a man's neck. You can only tie his collar. 
As well call a "collar button" a neck-button as call a 
collar-tie a necktie. 

Adam wore no necktie. If for no other reason than 
this, he should have been happy and left forbidden 
fruit alone. When Adam got up in the morning — ^why 
there he was ! You see. No collar-button to hunt for ; 
no necktie to select. And then, too, Adam did NOT 
have to hunt to find whether his union suit was inside 




144 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

or out. A large sign should be printed on the seat of 
each union suit, "This side up with Care." There is 
nothing more sad in modern life than the way union 
suits behave in the night. You take them off and lay 
them carefully away right side up. And in the night 
they squirm around and turn themselves inside out. I 
have gotten up suddenly in the night and caught them 
at it. 

I have been studying the life of Abraham lately. 
I wonder if he wore a necktie. None of his pictures 
show him as such. Noah wore a blouse open at the 
back. In all of the pictures I have seen, Noah gives 
evidence of having had to be hooked up by his wife 
every morning. I suppose he adopted this kind of a 
costume for purposes of natatorial exercises in case the 
ark sprung a leak. 

There is no evidence of the time when the necktie 
came into vigorous fashion. Have you looked at a pic- 
ture of G. Washington lately? Do you know what 
kind of necktie he wore ? Well, I will tell you. I have 
before me the pictures of the first seven Presidents of 
the United States. Every one of them wore either a 
white shirt and white stock or else a high dickey and 
a black stock. Not one of them yielded to the plea of 
the haberdasher, "Here is something new in a beauti- 
ful crushed strawberry effect." Old Hickory's collar 
came up above his ears and he wore black stock enough 
to clothe a High School girl of today for three years — 
all except her boots. 

There is no question today that if the same freedom 
can be secured in everything else as there is in selection 
of one's necktie, the world is going to be very safe for 
democracy which will be just as varied as neckties. 
There is nothing now, no law whatever — ^to prevent a 
red-headed tnan from wearing a red and green necktie. 
In fact, they generally do. Gamblers are now perfectly 
free to wear long, flowing white string ties; like 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 145 

William Jennings Bryan, who is equally at home in a 
black string tie. No statesman except Ham Lewis 
would think of wearing anything but a black string tie. 
I notice that both of our Maine senators have taken 
to them like ducks to water. A real old-fashioned 
dyed-in-the-wool, back-to-the-people statesman like Joe 
Cannon, wears a little black bow tie, ready-made, that 
goes on with an elastic and tucks under a paper collar — 
a very neat style never wholly effaced. Woodrow 
Wilson usually wears a black four-in-hand ; that is pro- 
fessional. Ministerial gentlemen used to wear white 
neckties. They passed on save in a few wayside 
pulpits with the Prince Albert coat and the high hat. 
There was a time when a man would not have known 
if he really had religion without a white necktie. 

It is odd that George Creel and Secretary Baker and 
Hoover have not as yet indicated what we are to do 
about neckties. We do not really need them. We 
could wear our old socks in place of them. Think it 
over, Hoover. They are pure waste! 



ON "MAKING AN IMPRESSION" 

GOOD many years ago I went fishing at 
Moosehead Lake with Seth Chandler, later 
Mayor of Lewiston. We visited Jim Ham on 
North Bay, a remote farmhouse with no 
roads approaching it within many miles, and 
reached only over the highway of the bound- 
ing seas, in the then omnipresent birch canoe. Jim 
had carved his homestead out of the deep woods and in 
a field of blackened stumps raised corn, wheat, pota- 
toes, and strawberries, so big that, as he used to say, 
he had to "have a cant-dog to turn 'em over so that 
they would ripen on both sides." 




146 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

One virgin mom we poked the nose of our canoe — 
my first mile in any canoe — into the nose of Duck Cove 
and there, under the dry-ki, we saw more trout than I 
ever saw before or since, a wiggling mass of "black 
backs," feeding unmolested. Jim threw in the old 
line, tied to an alder pole and began "derrickin' 'em 
out," throwing trout thirty feet over his head and 
shouting at the top of his voice, "the trouts is a 
climbin' of the trees." 

Such a day! A happy, hearty day with a weary 
ending as at night, tired and happy with unaccustomed 
labor and adventure, we came home to the little frame 
house standing all alone in the clearing. We expected 
to see only the familiar household, but not so ! In the 
Moosehead country, in those days, "company" was 
company and must be seen and heard, and so, by some 
mysterious telegraphy out of nowhere, the friends of 
Jim and his dear, sweet wife had gathered to see the 
visitors. There were Hams from far and near; from 
Dover and Foxcroft; from Seboomook and Socatean; 
from Greenville and Kineo, sons and daughters, sons- 
in-law and sisters-in-law and a great supper in the old 
kitchen which was also sitting room and parlor. 

I slept that night in the "spare room," altho of 
course it was not "spare" at all, being constantly in use 
and the Lord knows whom I pre-empted. It was on the 
ground floor, right off the kitchen, the door of thin pine 
opening outward, as happens to be of importance in this 
recital. I was to room alone, a remarkable considera- 
tion, for, as I looked back into the kitchen and saw all 
the Hams sitting there smoking or knitting, I won- 
dered what necromancy of figures could accommodate 
so many in so few rooms in so tiny a house on so great 
a pond. 

I shall never forget that bed-time — ^my introduction 
to the mysteries of a night by the greatest of all our 
inland lakes. There was a distant throb in the world. 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 147 

It seemed to sound like the sibilant breathing of the 
great soul of the Moosehead country. I noticed it as I 
took off my boots — a sort of throbbing and rustling as 
of Pan, the great god. I noticed it as I further dis- 
robed, in manner not to be detailed. I noticed it as I 
stood there in the cold, sharp air of May-time, in my 
night shirt; for those were pre-pajama days. I no- 
ticed it as I gazed out of the window on the star-lit 
night. I noticed, too, that it did not seem all to be out 
of doors. Some of it seemed to come from under the 
bed. It was a low, ghostly sort of sound. It sort of 
rustled and guttered like a slithering It. The odor of 
it was prehistoric, methought. I would investigate, 
and I did. Taking the tallow candle in my hand, I 
softly lifted the bed-valance and peered beneath. I 
saw IT ; IT saw me. With a leap there bounded forth 
with one almighty growl about 48 pounds of gray and 
white dog — wild to strangers and especially to me at 
that moment, and I leaped, three paces in advance, for 
the kitchen, where sat Jim and his wife and Frank and 
his best girl, and Ernest and his sister, and two neigh- 
bors and their families of bashful, bouncing daughters 
from over Kineo way and a few social callers from 
Greenville, forty miles down the lake. 

My entree into the Ham circle is still told in Piscata- 
quis county. There may be more sudden things than 
the unannounced entree of the star visitor with fifty 
pounds of dog hanging to his shirt-tail, but in a quiet 
and ordinarily calm circle, such a thing may pass as an 
epoch. "My God !" said Mother Ham as she raised her 
hands, fell backwards in her old rocker and went heels 
up, in a most unladylike position. "Hi, Bose! 
Goddlemighty !" yelled Jim, as he grabbed at the dog. 
I leaped over the prostrate form of Mrs. Ham and 
landed in the arms of Frank's best girl. As I flew, the 
dog waved behind me like the starry flag on a nor'west 
wind, and as he went along, he took my shirt. 



148 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

I suppose that, right here, we ought to draw the 
veil, but they were wearing nightshirts short in those 
days and there wasn't any veil except what the dog had 
and I did not feel competent to regain it. So I buried 
myself in the voluminous folds of Frank's best girl's 
gown until Mrs. Ham recovered her equilibrium and 
threw a bed-quilt over me, enabling me to make apolo- 
gies and compliments to the ladies and to retire. 

I came home and wrote this story for the newspa- 
per, thirty-five years ago, in which, as I recall it, I re- 
marked that we had been most cordially and warmly 
received at the Ham Farm and that all of them, the 
ladies included, united in saying that they could not 
see too much of me. 

It is my opinion that if you are going to make an 
impression, it is best to make a good one. This is one 
of mine. 



WHAT THIS DAY REALLY MEANS 

Victory Day, November 11, 1918. 

HE END of the war! 

The German Empire, proclaimed for world 
domination three generations ago, has fallen. 
Instead of majestic triumphs along Unter 
den Linden, with captives drawn at the 
chariot wheels of the Hun, we see the Hohen- 
zollerns fleeing to the shelter of neutral land in far 
deeper ignominy than ever fled Napoleon. A German 
Commune, like that which swept with anarchy and 
rapine thru the streets of Paris nearly fifty years ago, 
carries the red flag today in Berlin. We are living 
years in a day. And along the streets of this Free 
People of America, the sounds of rejoicing are heard 
on every hand. 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 149 

The breakdown of German autocracy, the end of this 
gigantic world-war ; the flight of the Imperial Hohen- 
zollerns to realms altogether "in the Dutch" are events 
of staggering significance. But these are not the 
whole of it. To us, the events of the day and hour 
carry a far deeper significance in the things that abide 
with the Almighty God. 

Every person who knows anything about the funda- 
mental philosophy and religion of Germany, knows 
well that from the days of Ferdinand Christian Bauer, 
down to the latest expositor, there has been a relent- 
less effort in Germany to rob the Bible of all its super- 
natural and spiritual suggestion. God has been driven 
not only from the temples, but also from the schools, 
the homes, the hearts, of the people, so far as autoc- 
racy could do it. 

In its place, has been put the gigantic Superman 
superstition of Nietsche, Trietshke and Bernhardi. 
Haeckel and Von Hartmann, and scores of smaller skep- 
tics and agnostics have preached their odious doctrines 
of materialism and boldy asserted that any means was 
justifiable in the attainment of the world-dominion of 
Germany. Such horrid doctrine did the eminent Ger- 
man preacher. Pastor W. Lehmann, proclaim to a great 
congregation — that "Tho it may sound proud, yet will I 
say that the German soul is God's ; it shall rule over all 
mankind." 

It is this ogre, this blasphemous and debasing trav- 
esty on Christianity, that has fallen. It was time. 
An impious philosophy, married to efficiency, had 
reared a hellish brood. These, also, have been driven 
out of Germany in this amazing debacle. To us, the 
spiritual vandalism, resulting from the emasculation 
of God ; the Germanizing of Christ and the consequent 
Godlessness of the ruling element of German Nation- 
alism, are of far deeper significance than the Kaiser's 
personality. Hands dripping with blood of Belgium 
as they hide the pitiable face of the Hohenzollern, 



150 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

fleeing from the throne of his fathers, are not more 
stained than those which pointed the way of blood 
from the pulpits or set the lessons of impious atheistic 
teachings before little children in a happy land. They 
deliberately robbed the German people of a living God 
and in His place set up a German god, soulless, military, 
lustful of power. "The German soul is God's ; it shall 
rule over mankind." 

And so we say — it is not alone a tyranny over the 
political welfare of a people that falls today. It is the 
tyranny over thought, pure aspiration, and the 
sweet and precious belief in the Sermon on the Mount, 
that falls with the ruins of that mighty political 
empire. Democracy is henceforth to be determined 
not in the currency of Nietsche but in that of Saint 
Paul. Human brotherhood is to be defined, not by a 
God with a German soul, but by a God who is a univer- 
sal Father as expressed by Him who died on Calvary. 
No longer shall a nation teach from its pulpits its own 
exclusive partnership with a merciless God and a lust- 
ful Savior. The eyes of the German people are today 
opened. The fraud is exposed. The superstition of 
the Superman is dead. The German people themselves 
see it today — else why did God forsake them in battle ? 
A false philosophy, the most dangerous and pernicious 
ev^r conceived since the beginning of man, has met its 
end. Had it persisted, the world would have been en- 
slaved; Faith would have died; Christ would have be- 
come a myth and God a soulless mockery — the mask of 
a German ego, conceived in lust and born amid slavery 
and murder. 

Celebrate! There never was a day like it before 
since Earth began to turn within the realm of space! 
It is the restoration of Brotherhood ! It is the attesta- 
tion of God's loving care! It is the apotheosis of 
human happiness. They must be celebrating it in 
Heaven ! 




ON "A CERTAIN FORM OF LAZINESS" 

HEN I was a boy, my mother used to say to me, 
"What in the world are you doing? I never 
saw so lazy a boy in all my life. You just sit 
and sit and sit, doing nothing." 

And I would say, "I am not doing nothing. 
Fm at work. I'm thinkin'." 
I believe there was some philosophy in my remark, 
altho at the time it was made, I rather think that it 
was an evasion. There was philosophy in it because 
boys all need time to be lazy. They have a right to lie 
in the sand, wiggle their bare toes, look at the clouds in 
wonder and merge their souls in the infinite. You don't 
really understand boys if you think they are made for 
nothing but to lug in wood; tote well-water; lug out 
ashes and study books. They need time to get ac- 
quainted with a boy's world. 

You don't understand boys very well if you forget 
that they have problems. You don't understand them 
if you think that they are not obliged in the nature of 
things to get a basis on which, later in life, to do busi- 
ness as men. There is a regular course thru which 
boys have to go. They have to loaf a lot. They have 
to fish. They have to roam the woods searching for 
acorns and beechnuts. They have to trap squirrels. 
They have to build snow-forts. They have to fight a 
lot. They have to set up stores for sale of household 
necessities at heavy loss. They have to give shows in 
the barn. They have to speculate in taws. They have 
to play hookey. They have to go camping-out. They 
have to keep rabbits. They have to own a dog. They 
have to swim, a lot. They have to play certain games. 
They have to do all these things and a lot more in order 
to fulfill a boy's destiny. And it is wrong to deny 
them these things. And they have to think a lot, 
lazily and idly, and their thoughts are as full of wonder 



152 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

and mystery as are yours, philosopher and pedant, 
wondering beneath the stars — in the face of the 
Infinite ! 

Laziness is not an absolute sin. At most it is nega- 
tive badness and often it is nothing but a panacea for 
the wounded nerves. Boys have nerves. They have 
awful attacks of them. You just don't know a boy if 
you can't make allowance for his nerves. He comes 
home all tired out with school. He works like a little 
beaver at lessons. His tight little nervous system is 
all frayed out. You better look out and give him room 
to compose himself. Give him leeway to be lazy. Give 
him right of way in which to do nothing. He will live 
longer and grow bigger and develop more if you let him 
lie around and forget that he has any chores to do. 
Let him "think." 

The greatest trouble in the world is that too many 
people try to run us. They won't let us alone. Boys 
ought to be encouraged to think so many hours a day. 
There should be lessons in observation in every school. 
Boys should be made to tell the teachers what they 
have observed, every day. Lessons out of books are 
not much good. It is what a boy has seen and knows 
by personal observation. It was this that made Audu- 
bon the great naturalist. It was this that made Lin- 
coln a great statesman. A great many people said 
that Thoreau was the laziest man in Massachusetts. 
He did act that way. He was too lazy, almost, to keep 
food in the cupboard sufficient for the next meal. But 
he was all the while making himself the classic-author 
of American literature — the poet-naturalist of the 
world. 

Don't give up the habit of boyhood. Take a little 
time every day to stop and think. Consider the heav- 
ens, how manifold ; consider the fields and forests ; con- 
sider man in the image of God; consider thyself. If 
you spend all of your time doing chores, what are you ? 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 153 

you s; 
lestiny 
you become? 



But if you spend a portion of your time considering 
your destiny and your opportunities, what may not 




ON "SAM AS CHAUFFEUR" 

AM isn't a real chauifeur. He has a license 
that gives him the right to drive himself 
around, but it gives him no right to drive me. 
He may make a good driver sometime — ^but 
now he is in the deferred class. He is even 
exempt, so far as I am concerned. 
He drove me over to Island Park one August day to 
hear the Governor make a speech. He drove some of 
the way with one hand — just to show that it can be 
done. Maybe it can. I rode once to Boston with an 
expert who took a notion every now and then to cool 
himself off by standing on the running board, steering 
with one hand and running gaily along at about forty 
miles an hour. I did not understand his reasons at 
first, I thought it was being done to correct the mixture 
in the carburetor. When I discovered that it was 
merely for the man's comfort, I told him to buy ice. 

I have never driven a motor car and never shall. 
It seems useless to go to all of the trouble to maim 
yourself when you can hire it done. I am told that 
there is an exhilaration about driving your own car. 
There is exhilaration enough for me, riding with Sam. 
He is the only man I know who can get thirty miles 
an hour out of a car with the emergency brake on, all 
the while. Sam says that after a few experiences in 
driving at high speed, with the emergency smoking, 
with powerful odor in the rear, you get the experience 
that makes it impossible for you to repeat the mistake. 
He is probably right about the matter ; all one cares to 
know is how many experiences constitute "a few." 



154 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

When we left Island Park, there was a large crowd 
to see us get out from under a spruce tree, turn around, 
escape the Ivw borders of the sedgy Lake Cobbossee- 
contee, get into the narrow roadway and cross a very 
] arrow bridge. Sam has a great many personal critics. 
He is a populai- parson and popular persons always 
attract attention when starting out on a new career. 
This was a new career for Sam. He jumped into his 
driver's seat and turned on the juice. Then he backed 
us up to an angle of 85 per cent perpendicular and the 
Attorney General and a Congressman's private secre- 
tary fell into the floor of the tonneau. Then he de- 
stroyed a flower bed. Then he dug up the private lawn 
of a summer cottage. Then he tore up a tulip tree. 
Then he pawed around with the non-skids and hit a 
garden of summer squash. We would have gotten out, 
but we were too busy destroying things and flying right 
and left, like Peter Rabbit in escaping from Mr. 
McGregor. Then, too, we were tangled up in the bot- 
tom of the car. I never was so intimate with lawyers 
before in my life. 

By this time that peculiar phenomenon that always 
takes hold of chauffeurs sometime or other, took hold 
of Sam. He was violently attacked with speed mania. 
Brooking no restraint — and I accent the brook — he 
dashed with lightning-like speed for Cobbossee. The 
light of conquest was in his eye. He was like a Poilu 
going "over the top" — all but his whiskers. He 
whistled a mad tune between his clenched teeth and 
with the rear of the automobile decorated with red 
salvia, rubber-plants, summer squash, and tulip tree, 
he buried the nose of the car in among the cow-slips of 
Cobbosseecontee and, then, — he released the emer- 
gency. 

Talk about exhilaration — ^^one could not begin to 
have so much fun and uplift driving the car himself, as 
if he were being driven by Sam. The car is always 



JUST TALES ON COMMON THEMES 155 

smoking in some joint when Sam is driving. And I am 
sure that few drivers would have thought of driving 
his car into the lake just to give us one of those "expe- 
riences" that keeps you from doing it again. It took 
nineteen Kennebec county politicians and a piece of 
rope to pull us out. Hon. J. C. Murphy, the talented 
journalist, engineered the job, in the interests of 
democracy. 

The moral of all this is — never do anything that you 
can hire someone else to do better. Stick to your own 
job. When I want an exciting ride — I am not going to 
drive a car. I am going to ride with Sam. His knees 
may shake ; his emergency may be on ; he may be taken 
with speed mania every now and then, but something 
sure will happen to interest and divert you. But when 
I don't want to be excited or diverted, I ride with some 
quiet party. Sam's license gives him no right to take 
me by force. And when he is out with himself and no 
one else, riding gaily along at full speed, all brakes set 
— remember that there goes a determined, a self- 
reliant, perfect master of the mechanism of the inter- 
nal combustion engine — Sam E. Conner. And if he 
keeps on persevering, tearing up beds of salvia here 
and there, the day will come when any man would as 
soon ride with Sam as walk. 



ON "CLASSIFYING MEN" 

HIL LOWELL of Lewiston has been a mer- 
chant and a commercial traveler all of his life 
— and a good one. He fell ill a year or so ago, 
up in a small town in New Hampshire. He is 
now about town again, not robust but in 
God's providence likely to have many more 
happy days. 

When he was stricken, his daughter hastened to his 
side. When able to speak, the doctor was summoned 




156 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

and Mr. Lowell said: "What is it, doctor, a shock?" 
"Yes." "I thought so," said Mr. Lowell. Calling his 
daughter, he said : "Pack my samples ; send them back 
to the House (meaning the business house), tell them 
that I am very ill and shall never take the road again." 

It was done as directed and one morning word was 
brought to the invalid's bedside that the head of the 
New York house — a great merchant from a great city — 
was down stairs and would like to see him. 

"I wanted to see you," said the Head of the House, 
"to tell you to be of good cheer. I came because I 
wanted to come, hoping to do you good." 

"But, sir," was the reply, "I am all thru. I shall 
work no more. I have resigned. You best fill my 
place. My connection with the House is over. I am 
sorry; but it is the end." To this the Head of the 
House replied: "We shall wait and see. Be of good 
cheer. Let us talk of other things." 

A little while later, maybe a month, a letter came to 
the sick man, saying that the house was still hoping 
for his better health ; that it had not filled his place and 
had no present intention of filling it ; no desire to do so. 
On the contrary, it had retained him and had sent out 
letters to all of his customers notifying them of the 
circumstances and asking them to consider themselves 
Mr. Lowell's customers. They had sent out samples 
and requested orders. 

Other letters of comfort and encouragement fol- 
lowed this and a few days ago came a letter from the 
House in which Mr. Lowell was informed that things 
were going very well in their business relations, men- 
tioning sales made by the House to Mr. L.'s customers ; 
discussing matters intimately and enclosing a check for 
some hundreds of dollars as commissions on sales made 
by the House to the trade formerly handled by the 
invalid. 

I am relating this story not simply because it is a 
story of kindness and thoughtfulness — not because it 



JUST TALES ON COMMON THEMES 157 

is the Golden Rule in business. It might be said that 
if there were more such instances, there would be fewer 
I. W. W. It might be said that if there were fewer 
I. W. W. there would be more such instances. It might 
be said that it was the result of faithful service by the 
Man to the House. It might be said that it is such 
houses that win the service that calls for such 
examples. 

No! That is not the reason. The real reason is 
more subtle and more difficult to express. I may be 
encroaching on forbidden ground in relating it. But I 
tell it because it was told to me first by a Lewiston man 
who said, "That was fine, I think. I am proud to tell 
the story because the firm concerned is run by men of 
my Faith — Jews. And it goes to show that you cannot 
classify men by race, religion, traditions, antipathies. 
Men are men — or not men. And the big thing we are 
learning in this day of trouble as Nations, is this very 
thing. All brothers !" 



ON "LIVING BY RIVERS" 

HEN I was a boy, I lived by a river and I know 
what an influence big rivers are apt to exert 
upon boys. 

Im^'^ Rivers reach out with abounding imagina- 
^^^ tion, to youth. This river of my youth was 
one of the four great rivers of Maine and led 

out to the sea. Many big ships were built upon it and 
went away down stream into the distance never to 
return. They disappeared behind the headlands, but 
we could still hear the voices of the crews chanteying 
"Way Down on Rio! Way Down on the Rio Grande!" 
and the call of strange places was felt in the blood of 
all the boys of our town. Many boys that we knew 
went off in the ships and came back perhaps in a year 
or two for a little stay in town, swaggering a good deal 




158 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

and telling strange tales of spice-lands, and strange for- 
eign cities — of Lima and Callao, and "Frisco" and 
South Seas, and adventures in the "Roaring Forties." 
These tales seemed to belittle the quiet, commonplace 
lives of us stay-at-home boys and never a boy returned 
to sea without some other boy went with him. Now and 
then an old ship, built in our town, came back and tied 
up at the dock and was ultimately broken up. So the 
ships that went and the boys that went — some never 
to return — all had their effect upon us. Our river 
seemed like the resistless current sweeping us away 
to the lands of Sindbad. There was never a boy in our 
town that was content to stay at home. It was almost 
a disgrace. 

The moods and tenses of the river have their effects 
on youth as does all environment, but with particularly 
healthful results, I believe, in the case of the river. 
The river was alive. It touched our emotions and 
awakened them. We lived in it and upon it. We used 
to go down to its wharves in days of storm and lie in 
the soft shavings of the ship-yards and hear the waves 
beat up under the piers and dream and sleep, awaking 
to hear the song of the river, dreamful, mystical, 
world-calling. On wild and rainy nights of high gales, 
we would walk along the river street and as solitude 
was my choice especially, I was deeply moved by the 
sobbing of the storm and the lashing of the waves, and 
the pitiless night ; and often in the deeper night when 
all others were abed, I have pressed my face against 
the rain-washed pane and listened to the roar of the 
river until daj'' broke. Equally did we love it in calm 
summer-days. It lay like a mirror, broken only by the 
leap of the sturgeon whose mighty splashes have 
awakened me on manj^ a summer Sunday morning. 
We fished in the river, swam in it, learned to sail boats 
on it, traded in crude boats in boys' coin — such craft 
as punts and skiffs, out of which the harvest of drowned 
boys was appalling. 



JUST TALES ON COMMON THEMES 159 

I count it a special dispensation for a boy to be bom 
en the shores of one of our four great Maine rivers. It 
is especially fortunate if he be born where ships come 
and go. It is no wonder that poets have likened the 
river to the river of life — small beginnings, shoals and 
rapids in its middle course; quieter broadening out at 
the close, and finally a gentle assimilation into the mys- 
tery of the shoreless seas. The person born and reared 
where ships come and go, gets something of a new 
faith. He counts no ship that he saw launched and 
sail away as ever lost. To him they still sail the seas, 
with gay flags yet flying — ever going and coming. So, 
too, with friends, dear friends, loved ones, who have 
gone on like the ships behind the headlands. The veil 
is not rent, as yet, but thru it, mistily, we see them as 
with the ships, waving to us over their sides, with 
shining faces and beckoning hands. 



ON "THE FIRST SKATES" 

UTUMN passed, and now winter has come, and 
have you seen a, boy with a steeple-topped 
squirrel trap or a boy with a top or a pair of 
skates? These be degenerate days. Neither 
are there any sling-shot or marbles — hardly 
any — nowadays. 
They have gone, I reckon, and now we find boys 
passing their afternoons in the picture shows and 
growing wise on Charlie Chaplins. Skates will be the 
last to go ; but never will they hold the place in child- 
hood's affections that once they held. And there is a 
reason. They are too common. Anyone can now have 
a pair of skates as fine and fast and as securely 
patented to the sole of the shoe as tho they cost ten 
times as much. Skates have been democratized. 
Skates have become what the automobile will have be- 




160 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

come when everyone can have one — quite too full of 
the human-brotherhood idea to be acceptable to the 
truly exclusive. So youth goes to the picture show and 
scorns skates. Nothing for the modern lad short of a 
chummy-roadster. 

There was a time, however, not more than forty 
years ago, when to achieve a pair of first-class skates 
was equal to extorting a Ford out of father. The gray- 
haired reader has a memory, we warrant, of a pair of 
skates that once filled his eye and he sees a picture of 
a small boy with his cold nose pressed against a shop- 
window in some country town drinking in the beauties 
of a pair that stamped themselves into his youthful 
brain as with a brand of iron, plucked but recently 
from the burning. And his dreams, out there in the 
cold ! All of a lad, strangely like himself but somehow 
stronger and stouter grown, swinging along over the 
smooth ice of pond or river, the steel singing at his 
heels the song of Mercury, on the four winds. 

What do boys do, now, anyway! Do they build 
snow-forts as once they did ? Do they spend long days 
and nights on open-ice, skating away, flushed, strong 
and happy ? Do they work for the wage that buys their 
guns and ammunition? Do they go without a single 
thing, just by way of learning humility and sacrifice? 
Do you remember the first pair of skates you ever 
owned? Was it not the product of a rummage-sale in 
which neighboring junk-piles and old-home sinkspouts 
went up the flue ? Were they not of antique build and 
commonly known thruout the neighborhood? Were 
they "rockers?" Did they have a toe that curled up 
over the foot and were the tops ornamented with a 
brass acorn ? Did they go on with a screw into a gimlet 
hole, in the heel of the boot ; and did they ever stay on ! 
and was the hole ever just right ; and could you dig out 
the snow and ice when you got to the pond ; and did the 
straps ever hold and did you know that you had any 
feet, after the first ten minutes ? 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 161 

Oh well ! Why repine ! You had your fun. There 
were warm, red-mittened hands snugly tucked in 
yours ; and flowing curls of brown or chestnut to tickle 
your nose; and red cheeks to look at and a beating 
heart to feel throbbing against yours as you swung 
with your first pair of skates over the ice. They do 
not have any such ice nowadays, perhaps. Your 
skates were as good as anyone's. The first pair of club- 
skates that you ever saw were reputed to have cost six 
dollars, and no boy ever had six dollars. If he had hap- 
pened to have that much, he would have bought a 
candy-store. Thirty cents was a going price for a 
skatable article. But you could do the Dutch-roll, cut 
curlicues; do the figure eight and grind-bark. And 
sometimes you could do them backward, when your 
girl was not looking on. Club-skates marked the doom 
of the boyhood skating. When they came down to 99 
cents a pair, there was no struggle in them. The mod- 
ern boy will now go out and buy a pair along with his 
cigarette money and then have his shoes tapped and 
shined. Dad is easy. 

But still we are glad we lived when it was worth 
while to go skating. Uncle Aleck is glad, too. He was 
a famous skater. He says he learned in the days when 
boys went barefoot winters and that he had such hard- 
calloused heels, that he used to bore a hole in his bare 
heel and screw the skate-screw into it. Uncle Aleck 
could skate as well as the girls now skate, at Winter- 
garden. He was a homely man on foot but a god on 
ice. I am sorry that skating is no longer popular. It 
tended to democracy of the republican nature. The 
rich as well as the poor were likely to fall or skate into 
a hole. And that was something. 




ON "THE SCIENTIFIC USE OF WHISKERS" 

CIENCE, especially that which is given in the 
woman's department of the modern newspa- 
per, is making rapid strides. 

We notice, for instance, an article in such a 
column, this week, on the scientific value of 
whiskers, which is not so interesting to the 
woman's department as it is elsewhere, because every 
woman knows the scientific value of whiskers better 
than man knows it. 

The Scientist in question, after talking about the 
disappearance of whiskers as pure adornment, once 
popular, but now gone with black-walnut furniture and 
hanging lamps, says that the whisker was originally 
intended as a feeler — a sort of telephone against run- 
ning into obstacles. For instance, a man with a fine 
set of bushy whiskers could go anywhere in the night 
and by protruding his head with his whiskers, the 
slightest obstacle would touch the end of the feelers 
and he would be apprised thereof. 

This is really wonderful! How strange are the 
ways of the Lord. Picture our early ancestors, going 
around dark nights, on hands and knees, with their 
whiskers floating out, starboard and port, confident 
that where their whiskers could go, they could go also. 
The cat is the present illustration of the case of early 
parents. The cat has never outgrown the necessity 
for her whiskers. The whiskers of the cat are exactly 
as long as the cat's head, and the cat's head is exactly 
as wide as the cat's body. Wonderful ! The whiskers 
protrude and wire back to the gland in the cat's nose. 
Any touch on the end of the whisker reaches the brain 
of the cat. So here we have a portable wireless on the 
end of a cat's nose. 

Take other adornments of animal nature. There is 
a cow's tail. It is commonly and crudely supposed that 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 163 

it was built onto the end of a cow for the purpose of 
brushing away flies. But it is not the original use nor 
the greater use. If you have ever sat under the star- 
board (or is it port?) side of a cow and been industri- 
ously extorting milk with all of the lush freedom with 
which a democratic congress gathers in the income tax 
from the non-cotton growing states, and had the cow 
swipe you in the eye with the more or less unsanitary 
end of the affair, you could believe anything. The 
cow's tail was originally a pump handle for milking the 
cow. There is no doubt of that. It is exactly as long 
as a cow's tail ; it is exactly as wide as a cow's tail ; and 
it is placed at the south, or milk-producing, end of the 
cow. It is simply atrophied as a pump-handle, by non 
use. I can fancy that olden day, when your great, great, 
great, etc., parent used to go creeping thru the bushes 
at night guided by a large set of bushy red whiskers 
that served as warmth, light and rudder, creeping up 
to a real cow, with a real tail, seizing her and pumping 
the milk. Those must have been good old days. No 
wonder the milkman sticks to the pump-handle even to 
the present. I suppose it is a sort of survival of the 
milkman's past, an avatar of that early day when the 
scenes aforesaid occurred that even now send the 
milkman out to the pump to yank her to and fro, purely 
from habit. 

Yes, science is making rapid strides. No longer 
man grows a beard that he may feel his way around. 
No longer the boy milks by the familiar methods which 
need no comment. We use electricity instead. But 
the day will never come again when milking is what it 
used to be. What sport it was to go out in the barn 
early in the morning and meet the cows. How the 
milk sang in the frosty pails. How the warm breath 
of the cows arose upon the air. Science has never 
improved upon nature. And science as found in daily 
newspapers with its convictions on the cat's whiskers 



164 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

and the whiskers of Adam and Noah and our early- 
fathers, does much substantial good in calling to mind 
those attitudes of primogeniture and making us wise 
to danger. For if we persist in riding, we shall lose 
the use of legs. If we persist in turning up our noses 
at other people, we shall lose our sense of smell. Un- 
doubtedly we could once flop our ears like the mule. 
What a loss today. Fancy the delicate tone shadings 
it gives to the lower animals. Picture an audience at 
the Symphony, suddenly throwing its ears forward 
with a swoop, at the pianissimo; erect, at the piano; 
longitudinal, at the forte ; to the rear, at the fortissimo. 
And then the grand ensemble of the orchestra with 
every ear wagging back and forth, up and down and 
round the circle according to the sensitive perceptive- 
ness of the ear. A glorious picture indeed. 

So as a moral : Don't give over the regular and con- 
servative use of the rudimentary organs. Don't get 
so lazy that you can't talk or walk or smell or taste or 
feel or think. Above all, don't forget to think. 



ON "THE UGHT IN THE EAST" 

HE woman lay, waiting the dawn of day. It 
was in a handsome room in a great house on a 
high hill, eleven miles from the nearest city 
whose factory whistles she could often hear 
and whose bells came sweet to her ears some- 
times of a still morning. 
This day was to be the greatest day in all the world, 
save one or two, which Christians especially observe. 

The woman had, as usual, passed a dreamful night 
— another of those long nightmares of haunted memo- 
ries. A long stretch of blasted moor dug deep with 
craters, in which stagnant water had gathered, cov- 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 165 

ered with green scum and floating, nameless things! 
A long road stretching away into infinity, bordered on 
either side by trees whose tops had been torn away and 
whose trunks were blackened and twisted ! Sometimes 
strange shapes flitted across them; moving armies, 
flights of masked men ; huge engines crawling like cat- 
erpillars and crushing human forms as they passed; 
rat-filled trenches vomiting flame; barbed wire and 
death ! Every night, by the edge of one of these holes, 
lay a figure that filled her soul with horror and made 
her heart almost stand still ; a figure that evoked mem- 
ories of a childhood form and of clinging baby arms. 
The face eluded her. She had never seen beneath the 
visor of the iron helmet. Sometimes she had not dared 
to look; at other times she must look but could not. 
All this for eleven months ! 

The light in the East reddened a trifle and came in 
at the window and settled on the floor. And then 
something new and effulgent slowly rose along with it 
from the floor, slowly creeping along the wall. It 
seemed a faint, aurora-like gleam as from beyond the 
hills — even from eternal fires beyond the imperial sun 
itself. It spread like a halo as if seeking some object 
on which to fasten itself. The woman stretched her 
arms aloft, her draperies falling from her, her hands 
clasped as in prayer. And the light slowly moved and 
moved and gathered itself and shone with faint flush- 
ings as tho a lambent flame from some moving taper 
searching in the night. 

And lo! From out the dimness of the room, there 
shone the face of a child — the sweetest face ever pict- 
ured — the Christ-child in the Madonna's arms. On 
this pictured face the light settled and then the picture 
seemed to step forth, as tho borne with the swift, 
soft step of a mother carrying her babe thru danger 
into safety. It filled the room! It seemed to glow 
and scintillate and to enrich the dawn. It seemed to 



166 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

the woman to be both omen and joy. It seemed to her 
to be word out of the infinite that, after all, mother- 
hood was to be enthroned in the world and the Babe 
was to be the symbol of a day when the world was to 
be without hatred and bitterness, under the inspiration 
of the new-born Christ. 

Such a dawn! The East was filled with a glory 
that seemed to presage strange and unusual things; 
but it was nothing to the glory that filled the room. 
The woman's heart almost stopped beating. She lifted 
herself to her knees and knelt in adoration before the 
Madonna and the child. "It must be a sign," cried she, 
and her voice rang strangely thru the silence. A sound 
as of music filled her ears. And the light shone 
steadily on the vision of the pictured Madonna — never 
before materialized in this woman's life — tho one of 
faith. 

And then, faint and clear over the hills, came the 
sound of distant bells and the roar of triumphant 
whistles! The still air of daybreak carried the story 
of unusual things. She would not believe what her 
heart told her was true. She watched the vision in the 
little room instead and prayed and prayed! And still 
the bells rang over the hilltops and the whistles of the 
distant town kept up their sounding. And the light 
slowly spread within the room and caught the golden 
frame of the picture and picked up the familiar set- 
tings of the chamber and its surroundings and swept 
out to meet the full day by the western windows look- 
ing out on high hills and deep valleys of the November 
landscape. 

And then the faint tinkling of the telephone bell 
sounded at her bedside and there was a low voice over 
the wire and the single word was "Peace !" 

And the woman fell back upon her pillow and it was 
wet with tears of joy. For her boy yet lived and would 
come back to her ! 




ON "AFTER DINNER SPEAKERS" 

F I WERE going to give advice to a young man, 
I should say, "Never become addicted to the 
baleful habit of after-dinner speaking." I 
have seen men who, in some rare moment, got 
away with a really good after-dinner speech. 
Men came to them and said, "It was a gem." 
They flushed with pleasure. I have seen them later in 
life — no longer the light, rollicking, care-free young 
men, with light blue eye and curling locks, but hunted- 
looking, pale, anaemic, bilious, furtive. And as I have 
seen them later, also, up there at the head table, full of 
pepsin-tablets and with no taste for the viands, I have 
said to myself, "Better a happy, care-free opium-eater 
than given over, body and soul, to the snares of this 
fearful habit of after-dinner oratory." 

I have often fancied the fate of the inveterate 
after-dinner speaker. A sword of Damocles hangs 
over his head all of the time, with accent on the Dam. 
He never knows when his telephone bell will ring and 
someone will call him up and say "We have booked you 
for a little speech after our dinner for the collection of 
peach-stones." Or "We want you to talk to our Neigh- 
borhood Club at its dinner to the ladies. You may 
choose your own subject." He gulps a half-refusal, 
for he has other business ; but the habit is fixed. The 
awful thirst is in his blood. He yields and again stag- 
gers to the orgie. His wife and children see him less 
and less. He wanders about the streets muttering. 
He seizes on futile stories and jokes that may be useful. 
He sinks lower and lower into the gutter of the banquet 
table and finally finds a grave in the little yard outside 
the nut-factory — "Sacred to the memory of John Doe. 
He was a confirmed after-dinner speaker." 

The idea that all an after-dinner speaker needs is a 
dress-suit and an engaging smile is where the trouble 



168 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

comes. Some people — those who get up banquets — 
seem to think that after-dinner oratory is pure spon- 
taneity and requires no effort but that of joyous 
speech. Perhaps it is the fault of the after-dinner 
speaker that this false notion obtains. He gets him- 
self up to deceive. He stands on one foot and curves 
the other gracefully around the chair leg and tries to 
pass himself off as thinking on one foot. He stumbles 
along, emitting witticisms that seem to be drawn from 
the occasion. Somehow society seems to esteem the 
speech that is made without any forethought whatever, 
at a higher value than the speech to which an earnest 
man had given time and deep consideration. So the 
after-dinner speaker wastes most of his time trying to 
jolly the listeners into the notion that it is spontaneous. 
If they only knew! Joe Choate was a great after- 
dinner speaker. But he used to spend about all of his 
spare time writing after-dinner extemporaneous 
speeches. 

A man died in Detroit the other day who had the 
reputation of being the readiest and wittiest after-din- 
ner speaker in the middle west. His fame was all over 
the land. He died, early (all after-dinner speakers are 
quickly taken off), and among his effects was a card- 
index of after-dinner speeches for all occasions. He 
had them for lawyers; for doctors; for dentists; for 
undertakers ; for postmen ; for politicians ; for automo- 
bilists; for rotarians; for women's clubs; for hotel- 
men — ^for every possible combination. For instance, 
he could combine a speech for the undertakers with one 
for the doctors (see cross references on index-cards) 
and he could combine an after-dinner speech to lawyers 
with one addressed to the "lifers" in the penitentiary. 
That man had system. And it takes system — a cast- 
iron one — ^to stand it. To arise before a crowded 
assembly, all eating ice-cream and battering their 
plates with their spoons, and talk thru the confusion 



JUST TALES ON COMMON THEMES 169 

of waiters breaking the china, while a dryness clutches 
at your throat and the pit of your stomach is playing 
"Over There" against your lumbar vertebrse, and per- 
petrate witticisms and slam around philosophy and 
belch forth eloquence and run a hundred-yard dash in 
brilliancy with a lot of other equally misguided inver- 
tebrates, is sure to require system and then System. 

I want, therefore, to plead with you, my dear read- 
ers who sit back in among the gilded throng that 
attend the sacrifice of these noble martyrs to an Ameri- 
can custom. You are in the boxes of the Coliseum at 
Rome. They are the early Christians, flung to the 
lions. You see before you men each one of whom is on 
his way directly to trouble. Every one of them will 
land either in the lunatic asylum or in the United 
States Senate or in Congress or in some other such 
retreat for the idle rich. A few reform and are saved. 
Most of them are in the clutch of the maelstrom, hope- 
lessly lost. But whatever their fate — ^be kind to them. 
B3 kind to them. 



ON "WALT WHITMAN AND SOME OTHERS" 

HIRTY-five years ago, prowling around in what 
was formerly the Peucinian Library at Bow- 
doin College, we fell on half a dozen copies of 
Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass." It had 
evidently been in great demand. Whitman 
published his first edition of the book in 1851, 
no publisher being willing to take over the contract and 
Whitman being a printer and a newspaper man with 
courage to publish it himself. In July of that year, 
Emerson wrote Whitman the famous letter which the 
poet published by advice of his friend, Charles A. Dana, 
and which brought such contumely and criticism on 
Emerson who hailed Whitman as a genius. 




170 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

Of course you know what was the great pother 
about the book. It had too many red corpuscles in it. 
As Vance Thompson used to say, there was nothing 
"caduque" about Whitman; he was all Man. He said 
things about the great mystery of reproduction that 
looked not to pruriency but to worlds without end, 
visions of the earth teeming with races and our duty, 
in the prospect. It was a very circumspect age. 
People used the fig-leaf for their emotions instead of 
using it as a fan. The book having been read out of 
meeting, the college boys were evidently stimulated to 
have copies enough for general circulation. 

All that has passed. We now look to purpose alone. 
A puritanical politician in Washington kicked Whitman 
out of a government job because the politician happened 
one day — fourteen years after the first edition ap- 
peared — ^to have just found out that Whitman had 
written "Leaves of Grass." "Dismissed for having 
written an immoral book," said he. If it be immoral, 
so is the Bible. Its thought is as pure as the driven 
snow. All the difference between Whitman and the 
weeping-willow literature of that period was that 
Whitman did not happen to be a punky anaemic. John 
Burroughs (the sweetest thing in all the world) loved 
the "good, gray poet" and wrote a book of friendship 
on him. The poet's life was passed in chastity, charity 
and in tending the sick in the hospitals of the Civil 
War. 

Whitman was the most glorious looking man who 
ever lived, save the Man of Calvary. John Burroughs 
says: "His sweet, aromatic personality seemed to ex- 
hale sanity, purity, naturalness . . . producing an 
exaltation of mind and soul that no man's presence 
ever did before." He was pure as his life and his per- 
son. All the trouble with him was — he recognized that 
there are Men, Women and a Cosmos. Whitman praised 
all the virtues and hated the Carnal and the Mean. 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 171 

This distinction some of his imitators have not made. 
They assume that because Whitman talked plainly 
about great and pure things, they may talk plainly 
about small and nasty things. I have in mind a book, 
published by an author in this city, a man of genius 
and poetical instinct who has made this mistake. He 
is thinking about individuals, as tho they were races 
of men. When Whitman wrote of sexual things, it 
was in the way of worlds without end and progress to 
the ultimate, never about individual passions, or erotic 
diseases. 

Here is Whitman's creed and this is what I am driv- 
ing at : "Love the earth and the sun and the animals ; 
despise riches ; give alms ; stand up for the stupid and 
crazy; devote your income and labor to others; hate 
tyrants; argue not concerning God; have patience; 
take off your hat to nothing, known or unknown, or to 
any number of men; go freely with powerful, unedu- 
cated persons and with the young and with the mothers 
of families ; re-examine all you have been told in church 
or in school or in any book; dismiss anything that in- 
sults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a 
great poem and have the richest fluency, not only in the 
silent lines of the lip and face but between the lashes 
of your eyes and in every joint of your body." "I have 
no chair, no church, no philosophy," adds he. "I lead 
no man to a dinner-table, library or exchange, but each 
man and each woman of you, I lead upon a knoll, my 
I'ft hand hooking you around the waist, my right hand 
pointing to the landscapes of continents and the public 
road. Nor I, nor anyone else, can travel that road for 
you, you must travel it by yourself. It is not far, it is 
within reach, perhaps you have been on it since you 
were born and did not know, perhaps it is everywhere 
on water and on land." 



ON "THE FIRST SNOW STORM" 

j'-j^f^i! OST of us have somewhere in the back of our 
^^¥r i^^i^*^' ^ dream of snug retreat in some farm- 
Lx i| house in the country, high on a hill ; with the 
^^ . snow blowing around it; with much music of 
^^ _ wailing wind and with big flakes spattering 
'■ the windows. We seem to hear the kettle 

singing in the kitchen, and mother humming around 
the stove with the indefatigable quickstep of the busy- 
housewife. 

The little boy who seems to be a very small edition 
of yourself, presses his face against the clear places in 
the pane and looks out on a world, all shrouded with a 
thick veil of enormous flakes that come sailing down 
criss-cross. He can just see the barn-door and the 
pump in the barnyard and the big elm in the intervale 
and the henhouse, where he keeps his pullets, but he 
cannot see the schoolhouse, a half a mile away, because 
the snow is coming down so fast. It is funny, the 
things the first snow does. It builds little pyramids on 
the wood pile and on the blue knob, on top of the pump. 
It attaches itself to the nails in the barn-door, in such 
way that little round knobs stick out all over it, like a 
fifer's eyeball. It decorates the chimney top and 
sticks to the north side of the chimney in fantastic 
way. It sticks to father, out there doing the chores. 
When he comes in he stomps tremendously with his 
cowhides and mother gets a broom to brush him. And 
the little boy goes to the door and pokes out his head 
and looks up into the sky and sees — nothing but snow- 
flakes. 

I will bet that there is not a person of mature years 
who has not frequently recurring memories of the first 
snow of years long since passed away. He hears it 
ticking away against the windows ; he hears it singing 
of coming winter in the chimney ; he thinks reluctantly, 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 173 

for its very sadness, of the chimney-comer and those 

that sat about it. It must have been its beauty, that 
unconsciously impressed itself upon him and made 
memory as long as life lasts. For there is nothing like 
beauty to stamp a thing into childhood memory. 
Beauty and variety ! For it also brought a new as well 
as beautiful world to young eyes. A world of meadows 
and fields obliterated, a world of running brooks swept 
away. In place of these came a world of still, white, 
measureless snow. No wonder it endures in our lives 
with singular pertinacity. 

And the big snow storms! Those old-fashioned 
snow-falls that just happened before we invented the 
word "blizzard." Snow storms that were no interrup- 
tion to traffic, because there was no traffic. Snow 
storms that over-rode the fence tops, hid the apple 
trees, buried the hen-coop and the pig-pen; filled the 
road even with the stone walls on either side. Snow 
storms so big that even the darned (I use the word rev- 
erently) old school teacher couldn't get to school. But 
you could! And you plowed, neck-deep, through it 
and found him there and you and he were the only 
scholars and you did not have a thing to do but live in 
warm and tenderly affectionate intimacy with him and 
found new and unexpected phases of his character that 
made you believe that after all he was human. Snow 
storms so big that no breaking-out teams passed for 
days. Snow storms so big that father stayed in the 
house and mother made mincemeat. Snow storms so 
big that, when the winds blew, they took the tops off the 
drifts and again made the roads impassable and there 
was no school for three days and you stayed in and read 
"Robinson Crusoe." 

I reckon that there will be snow in Heaven. It is 
too beautiful not to be there. How pretty it will look 
on the golden streets ! Nothing but perfection is to be 
found in the snowflakes. They are all perfectly cut 



174 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

jewels of crystal, finer in mathematical accuracy than 
lapidaries can make. Thoreau says "Snowflakes are 
the wheels of the storm-chariots, the wreck of chariot- 
wheels after a battle in the skies. These glorious 
spangles, the sweeping of Heaven's floor. So there 
must be snow, up there. And they all sing in the 
measure of the hexagon, six, six, six." 

The first snow teaches also transmutation of earth 
into heaven. "God takes the water of the sea in His 
hand," again says Thoreau, "leaving the salt; He dis- 
perses it in mist ; He re-collects it and again sprinkles it 
like grain in six-rayed stars of snow over the earth, 
there to lie till it dissolves its bonds again." Is not 
that like the Lord's handling of human souls? He 
takes them in His hand; leaving the earthy. He car- 
ries them to the skies. He re-collects them there and 
again distributes them over the earth, there to live 
until they again dissolve their bonds, to return again 
to Heaven and to a new earth. 



ON "MAKE YOUR LIFE A UVING SPRING" 

F YOU can keep your mind from running 
adrift, you do a good work. Every now and 
then some foolish lad kills himself because he 
is jilted by a girl — as tho he could not live 
without her when girls are girls and there 
are just as sweet ones, perhaps, as she who 
knows better than he that two cannot be happy together 
where two do not love. 

Keep your mind from becoming morbid over certain 
things you think you desire and without which you 
think life insupportable. Material things are not 
essential. "Do men curse you ?" says Marcus Aurelius. 
"Do they threaten to kill and quarter you? How can 
this prevent YOU from keeping your mind temperate 




JUIST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 175 

and just? It is much as tho a man that stands by the 
side of a pure and lovely spring should fall a-railing 
at it. The water never ceases bubbling up for all of 
that. And if you should throw clay and dirt in it, it 
would disappear and disperse and the fountain would 
not be polluted. Which way now are you to go to work 
to keep your springs always running that they may 
never stagnate into a pool ? I will tell you ; you must 
always preserve in you the virtues of freedom, sin- 
cerity, sobriety and good nature." 

What I want to bring to the surface in that wonder- 
ful sentiment of the Pagan philosopher who was wiser 
than almost any other man who has lived, is this: do 
not let the fountain of your life become a pool. 

That is what happens when the young man takes 
his life for such silly reasons. That is what happens 
when a man becomes half-crazy in his rage against 
another. That is what happens when a man goes 
around fancying suspicion against his best friends. 
That is what happens when a man becomes insanely 
jealous. That is what happens when a man be- 
comes discouraged, to the point of quitting all effort. 
That is what happens when a man ceases to be 
happy at life. The pool is an evil thing in the woods — 
for instance. It is covered with scum and peopled by 
monsters and rife with disease. Try, by the virtues 
indicated by Marcus Aurelius, to have your life a foun- 
tain, bubbling away clear and sweet, rippling and 
sparkling; full of sweetness and life-sustaining quali- 
ties. It sweetens not only the surrounding pathways 
but all of the lands thru which its waters flow. It runs 
away merrily and men and women bless its outflow. 
In all times we have idealized the spring. I like the 
French word "Source" as a synonym of spring. 
Chaucer never called it anything but the "Source." 

And is it not so ? Life — your life should be like the 
spring — not like the pool. Something giving out — not 



176 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

standing still and waiting for something to fall into it. 
It may be that you shall get some rain and some sweet- 
ness in such a pool, but for the most part it will be 
slime, blackness, evil thoughts, dark clouds and snaky 
things. 

Any man or woman can make of life a bubbling 
fountain — if he will. All lives are capable of it. The 
old philoisopher has given the recipe, freedom, sincer- 
ity, sobriety and good nature. Freedom is the biggest 
word in the four and it comprehends all that makes a 
man wise and liberal. It contains within its signifi- 
cance, disentanglement from the slavery of selfishness, 
of greed, of lust, of mean ambitions, of sins and mean- 
nesses. Following this, comes the necessity of doing 
this with sincerity — ^believing, believing, believing, be- 
lieving. And the sobriety which suggests conserva- 
tism of beauty. And finally good nature — ^blessed 
radiance of some lives whose rich flower is in human 
hearts aching after they have passed away. 

If there is any one of you who will determine to 
make his life a bubbling spring rather than a pool — 
please stand up now and say so. It is needed — ^your 
testimony in these days, especially. 



ON "GREETINGS TO SCHOOL CHILDREN" 

REETINGS and a word, on the way, to that 
army of school children of America, march- 
ing, after the long summer vacation in the 
year of 1918, along the old-accustomed paths 
to school. 

You, alone of all armies, retain your full 
quota. All others are torn either by enlistment or by 
shot and shell. Your fathers, your brothers, your sis- 
ters, your mothers, are "over there." You are proud 
of them and sometimes in fancy, can see them thru the 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 177 

smoke and dust. You expect them to do their duty. 
Have you thought that they expect YOU to do yours ? 
How are you going to do it? What sort of duty is 
yours to do? 

Let us think it over. The first thing a sol- 
dier learns is discipline. It is sometimes spelled 
"o-b-e-d-i-e-n-c-e." Disobedience in the army is a 
shame and a disgrace. In extreme cases it is punished 
by death; in lesser cases, by hardships almost as bad 
as death. 

The second thing he learns is courtesy. The good 
soldier carries himself like a gentleman. He is obliged 
to speak politely to his superiors in rank. By this 
means he comes to speak politely to his comrades. 
Courtesies sweeten the soldier's life. They smooth 
the army work. They lessen the burdens in hospital 
and camp for our sisters and our mothers who are 
"over there." 

The third big thing the soldier learns is neatness. 
He can't be a soldier and be anything but clean in attire 
and equipment. And when he is neat and clean, he 
thinks better of himself. 

Other big things that come to him are pride of the 
company, the regiment, the soldier's pride of courage, 
victory, honor, truth, love of country. He finds his 
very soul in the army. He finds HIMSELF also — 
prompt, able, courteous, honest, dutiful. 

You — scholars of America — must emulate the sol- 
dierly discipline of the Armies of America. You are 
the greatest and best army that we have left at home. 
You must be courteous. You must be obedient, you 
must be clean and neat ; you must work faithfully — as 
never before. This is no common year. Everything 
is different — school has greater meaning as has every- 
thing else in life. You must remember that this war 
is being fought largely for you. Most of us will be 
gone before its full benefits can possibly come. YOU 
will be alive and will enjoy them. 



178 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

It is a fine army — this that sets out for school under 
the peaceful elms. How different from that huddled, 
flame scorched army of boys and girls of Belgium and 
Northern France wearing gas-masks, fleeing between 
the screeching shells to some underground refuge 
where they study, to the thunder of great guns and the 
roar of explosions. If you have any sense of gratitude 
to those who are dying for you over there, can you fail 
to appreciate your opportunities this year, of all years ? 
Can you afford to be thoughtless or ineflftcient, dis- 
obedient or discourteous? Does not the vision of the 
great war make you more proud of your American 
birth and lineage ? Does not the picture of those other 
school-children in lands of war, make you better appre- 
ciate what you enjoy here? And will you remember 
now, hour by hour, that what the "boys" are fighting 
for, is the right for you to walk in peace along these 
quiet streets to a clean and well-ordered free school in 
a free land. 

And, boys and girls ! If you could only know how 
large a part in all teaching depends ou YOU. I know 
that you would be as good soldiers here as those older 
boys and girls are, wherever they may be. You would 
begin with obedience ; in all things, courteous ; glorying 
in the spirit of the army of Freedom and Truth ; honest 
to your school and yourself; proud of its victories; 
appreciative of the service that those who are dying to 
make men free, are giving you in pain and sacrifice as 
you walk your way to and from your schools. 




ON "THE OLD-TIME BOY-SHOP" 

ROBABLY there was a little old-fashioned boy- 
shop in your old-home town, that you still 
recall with certain recollections of fondness. 

Brack Andros kept the one that I recall, in 
a Maine village where I was born. He was a 
very tall, saturnine man with a tremen- 
dously black beard, unquestionably dyed. He had a 
most forbidding manner and a reputed kindly heart. 
His store was up a flight of wooden stairs, very long and 
narrow, not at all made for lounging. His door, when 
opened, rang a bell that tinkled on silence and, in sum- 
mer, seemed to rouse the blue-bottled flies that kept 
house in the one window of the shop. 

Brack (his full name was Brackett) was a store- 
keeper, a photographer and a cobbler. He wore a black 
glazed-cap that made him altogether more funereal and 
Mephistophelian than otherwise. He never smiled. He 
never sang or whistled ; but he had the faculty of hav- 
ing boys around him all of the time, sitting around his 
shoemaker's bench or watching him when he disap- 
peared into the mysteries of his photographic room, 
into which no boy ever entered. 

Brack kept peg-tops, needles, spools, paper-soldiers, 
cassia-buds, sticks of striped candies, enduring and 
saccharine gooseberries, elastic for sling-shots, slates, 
multiplication tables, paint-boxes, knuckle-bones, jack- 
stones, and certain confections whose names you would 
not know in these days if you were told. He never 
gave you a welcome or called you "sonny," or anything 
but "young man," in a deep bass. After he came to 
know you, he addressed you by your surname. For in- 
stance, if your name were Johnnie Bibber, he always 
called you "Bibber" and you called him "Mister 
Andros" as long as you lived. If you called him 
"Brack" just out of deviltry, you knew it meant a dose 



180 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

of "strap-oil" delivered with the shoe-maker's strap, 
that went over his knee. Most boys like a hiding for 
fun. Brack delivered it. 

"Shut the door, young man," said Brack when you 
entered and then, "Report, blast ye, report," and you 
must face Mr. Andros and salute, saying "Good mornin'. 
Mister Andros ! All right in limb, wind and whizzle." 
If you failed, "Whizz !" went the whistling strap. This 
shows that Mr. Andros knew boys and how to keep 
their trade. When he was very playful, he would go 
into the dark-room and emerge with a finger well 
daubed with nitrate of silver of safe solution with 
which he would streak your face, later to turn indelibly 
black and leave you proudly looking like an Indian. 

He used to sell cassia-buds at five cents a pill-box, 
full. The pill-box was worn off at one side so that it 
did not hold so many as it looked. What would you 
not give for the tang of the cassia-bud in the little bul- 
let-like, heart-shaped pellicles. You could not get it 
now if you had a ton of them. Brack knew. He knew 
the season for every game. When he put a set of 
"glassers" in the window, the mud dried up immedi- 
ately in the school-house yard. He knew when to put tops 
in the window. He appointed St. Valentine's day, we 
firmly believed. His best line was the old-fashioned 
"comics." Some old maid stores were above comics. 
They were brutal things. But Brack sold them 
because boys wanted them. He would stand and sell 
comics while a whole family waited for an ambro- 
type. Some of his pictures will live forever; fair 
looking men in velvet vests and with mighty beards. 

Long ago, Brackett Andros joined his fathers. The 
little old shop is gone. Most of them are gone every- 
where. Boys are no longer interested in one-cent 
goods. But something surely has gone with it. 
Brack's steps were worn by children's feet. Men 
grown to dignity of years never came back to the little 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 181 

town but to open the door ; hear the shuffling feet ; see 
the same old black, glazed cap and hear from beneath 
the spectacles, hiding twinkling eyes, the old, old 
words, "Report, Blast ye !" and himself to stiffen into 
erectness and saluting to the eyebrow, ring forth: 
"Good mornin', Mister Andros ; all right, limb, wind and 
whizzle." 

Will he be there, where all shall meet ? And shall 
we hear the same old salutation and be able to answer 
truthfully as of old ? 



ON "BREAKING OF DROUTHS" 

OU like a rainy day better than you like two or 
three rainy days, don't you ? But in spite of 
your weariness at the rainy season of June 
and July, 1918, you recall certain days and 
nights when the rain was music to your 
ears, coolness to your brow and healing to 
your soul. 

Do you remember anything like this ? A long spell 
of blazing sun of midsummer ; parched earth, brown and 
dusty; heat-waves rising over the fields; no water in 
the pastures for the stock. Then came a day when the 
poplar-leaves turned up white in the trees near the 
garden fence and seemed to be shivering all over; and 
the winds sort of moaned, eerie-like, around the cor- 
ners of the house ; and the hens preened their feathers. 
And the next day the mists seemed to come up over the 
fields and the men sat in the barn-door and looked at 
the weather vane and wondered if it would be wise to 
get any more hay down and then all of a sudden you 
heard a sound like the tinkling of silver coin on the 
roof and then a whispered lullaby as of myriad voices 
singing a world to sleep; and then the steady fall of 
the rain. And don't you remember the men, sitting in 




182 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

the doorway, with the rain slanting down across it, and 
up in a cosy bed in the hay, a small boy listening to the 
rain on the roof and dreaming big dreams? The 
drouth had broken. 

Have you ever come into camp or tavern at night 
after a hard day in the rain or snow and after warm 
supper and change of clothes and a pipe, crawled into 
bed to hear the waves on the beach, or the sleet on the 
roof, or the tree swishing against the logs outside and 
withal, the firelight in the open fire-place leaping to the 
storm ? 

Did you ever see the breaking of the storm; the 
lessening of the down-fall; the rolling back of the 
hordes of the sky; the lightening of the gloom; the 
silencing of the heavy artillery of the tempest; the 
coming of the blue beneath the flying scud ; and at last, 
the sun ; ultimately, the stars in all their glory ? 

You have. Would you exchange it for never-ending 
sunshine, a succession of days with never a cloud? 
Would you prefer a world without any turmoil, without 
storm or snow or sleet or rain? Do you suppose that 
it ever rains when it is not needed for the general plan 
of life, to water and enrich the earth, to bring the dust- 
germs to the soil, to reduce nitrogens and gases of 
other kinds, to give a bath to nature where she 
needs it? 

So do not fret when it rains on your new straw hat. 
Don't grumble if it rains a week to the defeat of your 
vacation. Think of the brooks that now begin to run 
to the sea; of the meadows, lush with upstanding 
grasses ; of how even in the city streets, when the rain 
swept down the canyons of the tall buildings and the 
gutters gurgled, they were carrying away the corrup- 
tion of a world. And if you can find no other analogy, 
find it in the washing away of evil things in the storm, 
even in the storm of the World on the Western Front. 
Maybe after all, the world is destined to profit also by 



n 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 183 

storms of war and that they are essential to advance- 
ment. Surely this war is bound to do some good, with 
all its evil, all its suffering. Do we not hope and believe 
that it will refresh our ideals and cause them to lift 
their heads like withered grasses when the drouth 
has broken? Do we not believe that it will spur on 
growth and bring new things to flower as even does 
the rain ? 

And if the wind comes round right and stands in 
the point of compass called God's justice, the day will 
be long and full of peace under blue skies and soft and 
tender airs, piping of peace. 



ON "OWNING HALF OF A HORSE" 

NCE upon a time I owned half of a horse. It 
was when I was a young reporter on the 
newspaper and roomed with a young man 
with far more knowledge of a horse than I 
had — and that was not saying much for him, 
either. Personally, I hardly knew which end 
of a horse went into a stall first and I could not have 
harnessed a horse, if I were to have died for not 
doing it. 

This particular horse was a descendant of a rather 
well-known Maine racer named Gideon which was, if I 
remember aright, a son or a grandson of the great 
Hambletonian. She was a gray and high-headed mare 
and full of action. We called her "Notala," for two 
reasons — one because we owed for most of her on a 
note, and second, because she had no tail, or rather, a 
docked tail. We used to ride some evenings with her 
and my friend who was very successful in society, used 
her to take his various girls out riding. I sort of 
changed the name of my half of the horse to "No- 
teller." Once or twice a week I used to get permission 




184 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

to take my half of the horse out, and we used to lie 
awake far into the night discussing which half he 
owned and which half I owned. We always agreed, 
however, which half of the note each of us owed. I 
always owed the half that was coming due first. 

Along about the latter part of August we discovered 
that the mare had speed. A couple of boys can usually 
find speed in a horse kept at a livery stable, on oats, as 
was ours. We took on about everything that we met 
on the road and as September came in, we trimmed 
some horses on the way to fairs. The mare had speed 
— ^no doubt about it and it was up to us to find out how 
much speed she had, for those were the days when 
speed in a brood mare was valuable, and our mare was 
young and well bred. Then, too, State Fair sort of 
imbued us with notions about speed and hoss-flesh ; for 
we loafed around the horse stalls a bit. 

After the Fair was over, we got permission to go up 
to the track and try out our mare for extreme speed. 
We got a light wagon and cut out all of the accessories 
such as extra tires and hitching-weights, and borrow- 
ing a split-second stop-watch, went to the track early 
in the morning before any of the rail-birds could 
"clock" our mare as she did the turns. My room-mate 
was to drive and I was to hold the watch on him. He 
scored once or twice by way of warming-up as we had 
seen the jockeys do, and finally we let her go and I held 
the watch. De-lighted! No name for it! Think of 
it! Only 2.21 14! Remarkable. Again we put the 
mare to it and this time I roared down the dawn, "Mile 
in 2 min. 19 sec. We have got a world-beater." 

We said nothing ; but we had a friend who wanted a 
fast horse. He had plenty of money and had never 
owned a horse. He knew as much about horses as we 
did — no more. He was a college professor. We wrote 
him about the mare and he came on to see her. He 
liked her. We went up to the track — we three — and 
tried the mare again. Again she did the trick around 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 185 

2.20. He wanted her. We sold her at a nice profit, 
paid our notes and were supremely sad and supremely 
satisfied. 

Time passed. Along about December we were vis- 
ited by a man who looked like a horse-man. He said 
that he had been training a gray mare belonging to a 
certain man — naming our friend — ^and he understood 
that he had bought the mare of us. 

We said "yes, that was the fact." The man looked 
us over shrewdly and seemed satisfied. "The mare is 
bred as you say," said he with a rising inflection. "She 
certainly is," said we. "And she had speed when you 
sold her?" "She DID !" shouted we. "You know what 
she did on the track to a wagon?" "Ye-e-s," said the 
man. "And the man was there when he bought her 
and saw her do it," said I. "Two-twenty, easy." 

"Funny," said the man, "I have been driving that 
mare to the snow and there ain't a four-minute horse 
in Chelsea that can't beat her. I have been giving her 
my best attention and I can't get her to go at all. I've 
shod and booted her and she can't go. Somethin' must 
a' happened to her or else I ain't no driver. You drove 
her a mile in two-twenty? And the buyer saw it?" 
"Yes," echoed we. "Where was it?" said the man, 
sort of helplessly. "On the Maine State Fair track." 
"Mile track?" said the man, sort of for lack of any- 
thing else to say. "No-o-o," said one of us. "Half- 
mile track; hanged if I know! None of us ever 
thought." "How many times around did you go?" 
shouted the man. "Once," said we. 

I have always said that two innocent fools, each 
owning half a hoss, can sell to good advantage if they 
can get a man for a buyer who is equally innocent. 
"Boys," said the man as he went away, "it's all right. 
I can sell the mare for a driver ; but she ain't no speed- 
hoss and if ever I do want to sell another hoss for 
speed, I'll send him to you." And that was the end of 
my end of a horse. 




ON "JUSTICE AS A SOLVENT" 

E HEAR a good deal about a middle ground of 
unity between the warring "classes" of earth. 
But what are classes ? Are men and women 
to be classified because one man has been 
frugal, thrifty, careful of his health, and self- 
educated as against the man who has chosen 
to do nothing all thru life but follow his passions, his 
lusts, his idleness, all of the while grumbling at the man 
who has gone ahead in service and in accumulation? 
Does a million of the improvident, constitute a class 
against a million of the provident ? 

Oppression is what we should get after in this 
world — and we should get after it by administration of 
every agency that will obliterate it. It is a sly fox and 
should be chased to its hole and there drowned out. 
Special privileges are the mice that burrow into the 
comfort of a million homes. Wrongful segregation of 
the common utilities of life should be hunted down and 
made to stop. 

When the public speaker, therefore, talks about a 
middle-ground of meeting in the warfare of nations 
and classes within nations, he talks about "Justice." 
The Bolshevist scorns justice, saying that it is merely 
a specious interpretation of power, made by the man 
who got the jump on the other and said that this is just 
and that unjust, when as a matter of fact there is no 
moral law involved. But justice is, nevertheless, the 
solvent and the ideal of human comfort and right. 
Generally, all human needs are spelled in three lan- 
guages — physical, mental, spiritual. Justice is the 
largest measure of human liberty consistent with the 
rights of others. Those rights are not altogether in 
food, clothing and luxuries. They are to be found also 
in human-love, protection of children, sanctity of home, 
right to live on the face of the earth, satisfaction of 
the yearnings of spirit, conscience, religion, soul. 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 187 

It is absurd, therefore, to go on fighting for purely 
material things. We cannot spell progress in dollars 
altogether — nor even in shorter hours of labor. A 
world in which every man was earning a hundred dol- 
lars a week and working an hour a day, would starve 
to death. The earth would laugh at him and say, 
"Starve." The edict of Eden was "by the sweat of thy 
brow shalt thou earn thy daily bread," or words to that 
effect. If the materialist, who represented in the be- 
ginning a common ownership of land and a common 
right to land, had put his labor into a field of corn, he 
would not care to share that labor and its productive- 
ness with a man who sat along the edge of the furrow, 
with his arms about the neck of a nymph and a bottle 
of wine in his stomach. He would demand segregation 
of that corn-field against such non-producer, and thus 
would be set up again the "class." He would say, "This 
is my field." 

Democracy is not a Utopia of idleness. There is no 
greater mistake than that comfort can come by less of 
honest work. There is no truth in the notion that 
"labor" is with the hands alone. Happiness is not alone 
in creature comforts. Pleasure exacts the same toll 
out of life as does toil — only more swift and depleting. 
Its opposite is pain. The opposite of work is peace and 
sound sleep. Those who talk as tho this world were all 
of it and that what we can get here by theft, by 
anarchy, by the red flag, is all to the good, are making 
the terrible mistake of forgetting that we have three 
natures — physical, intellectual and spiritual, and that 
we all go hence to some reckoning. If this were true — 
that all we get here by theft, anarchy and revolution, is 
all to the good and that the end is oblivion — the world 
is a monstrous mistake. This is the doctrine that sent 
Germany to the trenches and made of the world a 
shambles. This is the doctrine that our boys have been 
fighting. Are they coming back to find that this doc- 



188 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

trine is flourishing here at home, when they thought 
that they had killed it in the trenches ? 

Every time you hear this Godlessness preached 
(and it is being preached) ; every time you hear any 
man saying that this is the time to get all you can re- 
gardless of the other fellow, you better deny it. This 
IS the time to get what is consistent with justice, and 
there never has been a time when it was not right to 
do so. Justice thinks of no class, but all classes. It 
encourages no enslavement of any man. It works for 
equality up to capacity. It thereby encourages every 
man to be prudent, persevering, studious and diligent. 
If, under some dispensation, every man were equal to 
his neighbor, the mind would cease to aspire and the 
soul to expand. Justice just simply gives you a chance. 
You can't be idle, lazy, cruel, gross and vindictive and 
be "equal" to the man who has cultivated the pastures 
of his mind and soul, any more than the barren field is 
equal to that which ripples in the golden wheat. 

ON "A STORY *HOW HOSEA CAME' " 

T WAS a dark and stormy night, on Moosehead 
Lake. The crowd of sports were sitting in 
Elgin Greenleaf's camp at Sugar Island. It 
had started in to snow along about three 
o'clock and Elgin had sent the steamer down 
to collect the boats and tow them in. The 

snow came so thickly that they could not see the island 

and had to steer by course and compass. 

After supper, with the decks cleared and the boys 

sitting by the leaping open fire, Elgin himself came in 

and sat in the old rocker, talking in his high, eerie 

voice, tuned to the storm, as it whistled around the 

corner. 

"Elgin," said one of the fishermen, "it must be 

awful lonely here sometimes, especially in fall and 

winter." 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 189 

Elgin hunched his chair a little nearer the ruddy- 
blaze ; took a look up at the little over-head scaffold far 
up in the eaves of the camp, on which were stored the 
tin-pails of matches, nails, screw-drivers and other im- 
pedimenta of a hunting camp, and began to tell this 
story to Amos Fitz, Fred Gross, Ad Pulsifer, Henry 
Hanson and other boys gathered around him. 

"You remember my friend Hosea that used to come 
up here," said Elgin. "He was a spiritualist. He al- 
ways said to me, 'Elgin, you bear in mind there is 
something in this here spiritualist business and I'm 
going to prove it to you!' He used to tell me that if 
he died before I did, he would surely come back and 
give me some sort of a demonstration of what a husky 
spirit realliy is. 'And,' said he, *I won't make no ordi- 
nary sort of a demonstration. I will make one hell of 
a noise, so that there won't be no doubt about it. 
You'll know it when I come.' 

"Well, Hosea died over in Bangor, in the summer, 
and I staid up here till late fall. Everyone had gone 
and I was expectin' the carpenter to come over from 
Kineo station to help me close up the houses and camps. 
It came up to snow and blow a gale, just about as it is 
tonight and he didn't come, so I was all alone on this 
big island. And, boys, it blew somethin' awful. The 
wind howled around this old camp, woofed down the 
chimbley, roared around the corners and shook this 
camp something terrific. The fire seemed to act funny ; 
kept leapin' up and growin' pale, and the branches 
growled against the roof and the winds seemed to be 
rattlin' the door and fingerin' the latch, and howlin' like 
demons, and the waves sploshed on the beach and a lot 
of other sounds mixed in. And I, all alone, I naterally 
fell to thinkin' of Hosea." 

Elgin paused to let his words sink in and that his 
listeners in the camp-fire's light might compare the 
description of that night with the wild and ghostly 
sounds going on outside. 



190 JUBT TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

"I was a rockin' right here and thinkin' of Hosea. 
Sez I to myself, 'Ef Hosea was to come, wouldn't he 
average to come in on this wind and to the old place 
where we used to sit and on such a night as this? 
Hosea was a powerful set man! He never said he 
would do a thing and failed to make good. He was a 
good man and true, and I'm rather feared he'll come 
tonight.' 

"So I couldn't keep Hosea out of my mind ! I was 
a settin' right here," continued Elgin. "I was rockin' 
right in this chair. I was thinkin' of the way Hosea 
said he would come, with a hell of a noise, when, boys, 
just as sure as I am alive, there came right behind me, 
floatin' like a streak of white lightnin' out of the ceilin*, 
a somethin' that struck the floor within two feet of the 
after right hand rocker of this old chair with a bang 
that — s-a-a-a-y, well — you never heard no such dam 
racket in all your bom days, rip-roaring, tin pans and 
clatterin' and hellishness personified breakin* all 
records. 

"Well, sir, that noise sent a thrill thru me to the 
marrer ! It lifted me out of this chair, and turnin* 
around, I leaped to my feet and yelled at the top of my 
voice, 'My God, Hosea, HAVE you come? Have you 
COME?'" 

The wind whistled a stave or two of the grave- 
digger's lament, over the chimney. Silence sat on the 
crowd as with funeral robes. Elgin rocked gloomily, 
saying nothing. 

"W-w-w-e-1-1," stammered Fred Gross of Auburn, 
"was it Hosea?" 

"No," said Elgin reflectively as he thought a mo- 
ment. "It was a tin pail full of nails and matches that 
had been a-settin' on the edge of the scaffoldin' right 
up there overhead, and it had come loose by my rockin' 
and the wind, and had struck bottom up jest behind my 
back ! I ain't never heard nothin' from Hosea since." 




ON "PRESERVATION OF THE HOME" 

MONG other commissions, we should have one 
on families that run to more than one child. 
Modern motherhood has taken on vastly 
complex phases. In olden days, mother ap- 
peared on the scene (out of brief and periodic 
absences) with a new babe in arms and let 
the forerunners run. In those days the germ was not 
in existence; Pasteur had not pessimized us; dirt was 
supposed to be healthful and a child was not "doing 
well" until it had run thru the gamut of children's 
diseases, usually without other medical attendance than 
the household "granny" could afford. As for diet! 
Well, it was table-food and enough of it. 

Nowadays, mother is a little wiser than Solomon 
about babies and knows more than Dioscorides about 
medicine. If she has two small babies she is a slave. 
If she has three, she is a "slavey." If she has four, 
she is a martyr, and if she has five, she is a nervous 
prostrate, surrounded by winged microbes, influenzas, 
croups, malnutritions, adenoids, tonsils, circumcisions, 
dentitions, infections, septics, antiseptics, ptomaines, 
proteids and heat-units. Her mother probably never 
heard of any of them and the Lord protected her and 
her brood. The Lord has now abandoned all mothers 
and they have nobody left to protect them, poor things, 
except the doctors and Uncle Sam. 

Children are tyrants, if permitted to be. They are 
unreasoning animals — content with what they have, 
unless they have too much. Mother's mother had 
nothing to give her children but bread and molasses 
and a not over-clean kitchen floor, on which to roll to 
their dirty little content. Grandmother's baby finger 
was besmeared with molasses and a tiny goosefeather 
stuck to it and grandmother whiled away her oblivious 
infant day, trying to pick off the feather, which be- 



192 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

came increasingly difficult as the molasses spread on 
her digits. An old-fashioned baby could be tied in a 
bushel basket and set on the back door-step, for the 
afternoon, with certainty of never a "yip" out of her. 
Now she needs to have her adenoids inspected hourly ; 
her nutrition weighed minutely on apothecaries' scales ; 
her eyes examined by the oculist every afternoon; 
while some of these new babies are said to be even born 
wearing bifocal lenses on their tiny noses. 

So it has become impossible to rear babies, fashion- 
ably and scientifically, any longer, without a Federal 
Commission to supply what the Red Cross has been 
supplying in this war — first aid to dying, starving, 
soul-worn motherhood. Few women can live thru the 
successful battle against unseen foes, for one child, 
much less two or more. Many of them foresee the 
issue and leave large families to those who can't afford 
to hire child-specialists and therefore can afford to 
have babies. The answer to this is : think of the chil- 
dren we save by fanning off the germ. The reply to 
this is: think of the children we lose by knowing so 
much. The pros say "notice the lessening infant mor- 
tality." The cons say "notice the decreasing birth- 
rate." Give us liberty or give us a Federal Commis- 
sion to supply nurses for tired mothers. 

Do you know anything that is scarcer than hen's 
teeth? Yes! Baby-tenders! I know a woman who 
offered this week, $25 a week, board, laundry, an after- 
noon out with a ticket to the movies, to a nurse to come 
to her home and care for four children for three weeks 
while she went to New York to escape going crazy. 
She offered it again and again in vain. All seekers for 
employment turned the job down and the children are 
all healthy, happy, contented little folk, just active, and 
yet we hear about organized charities. 

So we turn to President Wilson and suggest that as 
soon as he makes peace abroad, he come here and make 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 193 

peace at home. The soldier in the field has done his bit 
and it took ten months. The mother, at home, does 
her bit and it takes a lifetime. And nobody talks of 
federal aid for her but myself. If infant mortality is to 
be kept low, and mothers are to keep up the fight 
against unseen foes, Maternalism must join Paternal- 
ism in government and jaunty maiden ladies, who have 
been driving automobiles or worked for the Red Cross 
or knitted and purled in public, must rally to the relief 
of their sisters on the firing line of the cradle. We 
must have organized central agencies of relief. We 
must have organized rest-day planning, for half-crazed 
mothers. We must have settlement of increasing per- 
plexities of house-keeping. We must have organiza- 
tion of cooking and service. We must have intelligent 
consideration by the government of how the American 
home may be saved ; for as sure as you are a foot high, 
it is in danger. We must either have cooks, nurses, 
housemaids, or we must give up having babies. We 
must have service or else give up the home and turn 
the babies over to some germ-proof storehouse for 
rearing them. 

Either one of these I say (all obnoxious or impos- 
sible), or a government of the mothers, by the mothers 
and for the mothers, by Federal commission, lest 
babies perish from the land. 



ON "THE PINE TREE" 

HIS tree stands by the sea and on mountains 
and speaks a language of the sea. Lowell 
says of it : "But the trees all kept their coun- 
sel and never a word said they; only there 
sighed from the pine-tops a music of seas far 
away." If you lie on the brown floor of a pine 
wood and look up at them and see the needle points 
reaching about, each to his neighbor, and see the 




194 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

branches swaying to and fro, you can easily hear the 
whispering and it is all of ships and the sea and of the 
wind of the salty odor, that passes along. The pines 
at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, always seemed to be 
talking of the ocean whose breezes stirred them. 

"The pines have always been a sea-going family 
since first sails were spread," says Maud Going, who 
wrote a beautiful book about trees and who quotes 
from Reybolles about the pine: "This grand tree, 
shooting up like a palm towards the clouds, what is its 
fate? Prone and naked in the hands of the ship- 
wright ; rising to the stately mast of a ship ; carrying a 
flag with all the ideas it represents, to the ends of the 
earth." Thus born by the sea, destined to the sea, why 
not talk among its branches of the sea, rippling like 
silken-gowns or roaring like distant surf on ledges. 

The pine tree has a peculiar function among trees, 
also. It lives all along the Atlantic coast from far 
north to far south and forms a windbreak and barrier 
for the more tender, broad-leaved trees that live fur- 
ther inland. And yet more strange, they live also 
along the Great Lakes and brave the gales there, for 
the same valiant purpose. For the gales that sweep 
the Maine coast thru the pine and spruce, hemlock and 
fir, would tear to tatters the broad-leafed oak or maple 
or elm. The evergreens are brave, staunch trees, bear- 
ing burdens of snow on their sturdy branches. The 
winds slip thru them ; they fling their arms skilfully, 
like a boxer in the ring, and they love the cold and the 
storm. They are fit emblems for this State of Maine, 
that also stands firm, with its jutting headlands against 
the piling thunderbolts of the winter storm. 

Another thing about the Pine-tree and some of its 
brother conifers, is this : it endures easily and proudly 
where life is hardest. It is an out-door, two-fisted 
tree. It does not matter much to the pine whether 
it is in the arid sand or on the sparse soil of the rock- 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 195 

bound coast or on mountain-tops, it will endure. 
Sometimes in the sand, it will send down tap-roots 
thirty feet for moisture. You will find them also on 
the flinty scarp of Mount Kineo, clinging to rocks with 
roots piercing fissures hardly big enough for the blade 
of a pen-knife to enter ; yet exposed to gales that would 
rip the life out of a maple. And here the pine stands, 
and sings and sings. The pine-tree did not choose this 
kind of life. It was naturally a tree of the lush lands, 
the river valleys. Here it is so beautiful that one can 
well-nigh worship it. Once, the conifer covered the 
earth. They were mighty in the land, when all at 
once, lo! the broad-leaved trees appeared in immense 
number and variety. They were like an invading 
army — as when the Saxon invaded England, says one 
author, and the wild British fled to swamp, mountain, 
desert and barren. So fled the pine by absolute con- 
quest of numbers — ^but never dismayed, only made the 
stronger and more self-reliant. Some went to the 
sands, sending roots deep, so that when burned over, 
the pine reappears from its deep sources. The broad 
leafed tree can never follow them to their retreats. 

The Maine pine once lived in Greece. There, ac- 
cording to mythology, it was a lovely maiden, named 
Pitys, whom Pan, the player of world-symphonies, on 
river reeds, the sweet god Pan, loved. He whispered 
to her on the breezes and Boreas heard it — wild Boreas 
of the North wind. He also fell in love with Pitys and 
declared that no mere piper on small instruments 
should have the maid ; so he threw her from the rocks 
and the gods caught her just in time to make her into 
the Pine. 

The winds love the Pine and foster it. All its seed- 
ing is done by the wind ; thus it seeds where life is so 
cold that bird or insect could not live. You have seen 
the pine-pollen in long yellow streaks on ponds. The 
pine cone is so wonderful as to deserve a chapter to 



196 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

itself. It will make you sure of God; it could not 
happen by chance. 

Massachusetts put the pine on its coinage. Maine 
took it for its symbol — the happiest gift from the 
mother state. Our forefathers did not choose it for its 
beauty, because along by the sea it is gnarled and 
twisted. They chose it because it is an out-post tree, 
protecting the weak; because it is rugged and strong; 
because it is clean ; because it is ever-green and never- 
dead. They chose it because they saw in it an augury 
of the people of this State. They chose it because they 
hoped we might be as undaunted as the Pine. 



ON "TOTAL DEPRAVITY OF 
INANIMATE THINGS" 




ANY years ago, Edward Everett Hale wrote a 
story about a hoop-skirt and how it deliber- 
ately and with malice aforethought, defeated 
the Southern Confederacy. An old-fashioned 
hoop-skirt, out-of-place, was a pure and 
highly accomplished type of depravity. Mr. 
Hale went farther than this and spoke of "the TOTAL 
depravity of inanimate things." One could not satisfy 
any of the inclinations of a discarded hoop-skirt. 
There was no way of pleasing it. It was totally de- 
praved. If you had lived in the days when they were 
fashionable, which came along about the time of the 
civil war and a few years later, and had been compelled 
as a boy to take a hoop-skirt and dispose of it, you 
would understand. The hoop-skirt was a series of steel 
wires, flattened and thin, highly elastic, laid parallel 
and concentric, held together by tapes and worn about 
the female form for purpose of sinuous rotundity and 
other things. I have nothing to say about what they 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 197 

would do when worn. Far be it from me. But I do 
know something about them after they were supposed 
to be dead and discarded. 

For instance, an old hoop-skirt could not be put into 
an ash-barrel. If you attempted it, the hoop-skirt 
would immediately stick its head up over the top of the 
barrel like the sea-serpent from the deeps and would 
grasp you in its embrace. You could not burn a hoop- 
skirt in a bonfire, for if you tried to do so, the hoop- 
skirt would disentangle itself and, released from its 
tape, would go cavorting all over the yard and up the 
street and snaking it all over the neighborhood, and the 
neighbors would say, "There comes one of the X's old 
hoop-skirts." You could not bury one of them. Oh, 
no. I have seen hoop-skirts that had been buried a 
week, rise from their graves and come leaping into the 
house. The dynamic power of a bundled up hoop-skirt 
was equal to that of a modern depth-bomb. You could 
not hang them up in a closet out of the way, for if you 
ever entered a closet, the hoop-skirt was ready and 
waiting for you. It would grasp you around the neck ; 
and you would get your head between the wires and 
you were liable to be choked to death or guillotined. 
You could not put one of them in a trunk. Oh no, 
once more! When you opened that trunk the hoop- 
skirt would leap to the ceiling and come down envelop- 
ing you. You couldn't throw them in the river, for the 
pesky things would catch in the propellors of steam 
craft and do damage. Junk men would not buy them. 
Ash men would not take them. The only thing pos- 
sible was to hang them right side up from the beams 
in the upper attic and when the attic was full — ^why, 
sell the house. 

There are other things, more modern, that have a 
certain element of "total depravity of inanimate 
things." They have a certain deviltry that seems to 
reside in some element of matter, cognate with intellec- 



198 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

tuality. Indeed, some of these things seem to think, 
exclusively, in terms of mischief. I think I have 
spoken of union-suits. I have actually proven that a 
union-suit of respectable ancestry and make, will ac- 
tually turn wrong side out in the night. I have laid 
them absolutely right side up at 10 P.M., signed, sealed, 
et cetera, and woke in the morning to find the left leg 
where the right ought to be and the seat thereof on the 
front porch and the right leg twisted around the neck. 
I have almost caught them squirming into mischief in 
the night. At present I am driving a nail thru the seat 
of mine every evening so as to make sure of finding it 
in equilibrium in the morning. And what is worse, 
with hoop-skirts, union-suits and so forth, is that they 
choose the most unfortunate times for their depraved 
doings. The rascals actually THINK. There is no 
doubt about it. 

Take a shoe-string. Did one of them ever break on 
a fine, peaceful, leisurely Sunday morning, when you 
had more time than you knew what to do with ? Never. 
It looks up into your face innocently, assuringly, on all 
leisurely days ; but when you are in a hurry, when the 
world depends on your catching the 7.10 train, it 
"busts." And it "busts" in a perfectly sound spot. 
Take shoes! Did your shoes ever squeak except at a 
time w'hen you were compelled to walk up the aisle in 
some highly formal gathering with the eyes of every- 
body on you — such a place as church — or when sud- 
denly called to the platform as third vice-president of 
the league to enforce peace. THEY know. Say they : 
"This is the time to make this poor old simpleton red in 
the face. Let's do it!" When do suspender buttons 
burst away in a perfect rain of buttons? At recep- 
tions when you are in the receiving line and when you 
can't shake hands, hold your wife's bouquet and main- 
tain your equatorial respectability with fewer than 
four hands. 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 199 

Don't talk to me — inanimate things think ; and they 
are frequently depraved, and highly inclined to prick 
the bubble of our self-complacency, reduce swollen 
heads and take the conceit out of all men and some 
women. In this way they have educational uses. 



ON "THE HALF HOUR BEFORE YOU SLEEP" 

OW many of us pass for a little while into 
another world in the brief half hour before 
we go to sleep o' nights? Then there are 
visions a plenty, flowering and fading, weav- 
ing in and out into a fabric as weird and 
impalpable as the far-off curtains of cathe- 
drals that we have never entered. 

The mind then plays strange tricks with us and 
brings out of its recesses all sorts of ghosts that we 
thought were long since laid. They are, as someone 
has said, "like old daguerreotypes that shine out with 
unexpected vividness from their cases," visions of old 
houses "where dwells a ghost of yesterday, of a girl, 
now half a century dead, of lovers who kiss a while; 
then, drowsily, the mists blow round them wan, and 
they, like ghosts, are gone." 

There are certain places in my mind that keep com- 
ing up every now and then, and have done so for forty 
years. They are the most commonplace incidents of 
boyhood life — a path that led up past a fence, by the 
side of a stone-pit, up a very narrow shelf of rock, to a 
hill-top and then a western view that is set with an old 
oak tree and a frog pond. Whenever I think of this, a 
train of reminiscence is set up and immediately I think 
of Prester John. Now why in the world should one 
think of that mysterious party of olden traditions 
when this place comes to mind ? But never do I think 
of this on the hill-top ; for, having arrived there, I think 



200 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

of the Tower of London and Eliot, Pym and Raleigh 
and all of the rest of that busy breed of men who were 
headed mostly toward the final home of England's 
brains, in those days. 

I have never cared to ask other people if they were 
bothered with the persistent return, night after night, 
of these strange old places. Each of them leads to a 
definite train of thought. For instance, if I think of a 
certain nook where I used to lie of a summer afternoon 
and listen to the waves under the piers, I bring in an- 
other train of thought and especially of old sea rovers. 
The reason of this is natural enough, but why Prester 
John and old romances because I start in my mind to 
crawl dangerously and painfully up that narrow ledge 
of rock to the old hill-top? 

Of course there are times in everyone's dreaming — 
consciously dreaming — when there are visions that 
seem to come plainly from one's past. With everyone 
the old imagery appears. I often see myself as a 
ragged boy walking thru strange places that I have 
never visited and never shall in this world. What are 
they? Are they evidences of some other existence, 
some pre-natal life — or just fancies? Perhaps you 
have seen, as I have seen, places that seemed to have 
been visited before; heard things that you seemed to 
have heard in some previous existence and especially in 
this mystic half hour when the soul is about to take 
wings and fly away, does one stand at the portals and 
peer into the other world? 

Certain lines of reading also cause familiar scenes 
of childhood to intervene between me and the pages. 
There is a certain lonely old house, that keeps con- 
stantly in my mind. I have no association with it; 
was never inside of it ; know nothing about it ; can see 
only its old battered stove pipe, leaning tipsy-like to 
one side. I have been reading the story of Ghengis 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 201 

Khan and all of the time crawling over the rafters of 
an old, abandoned stone-crusher where we used to revel 
as a lot of boys will do in any abandoned property. 

"I have killed the moth," says the poet, "flying 
around my night-light, but who will kill the time-moth 
that eats holes in my soul and that burrows thru and 
thru my secretest veils. . . . Who will shatter the 
Change-Moth that leaves me in rags — tattered old 
tapestries that swing in the winds that blow out of 
Chaos. Night-Moth, Change-Moth, Time-Moth, eaters 
of dreams and of me." You talk materialism when 
you cannot understand why your soul plays such 
pranks with you. You talk materialism when face to 
face with the Change that touches all of us as with the 
death of the moth ! Better solve the things that may 
be, in the half-hour before you go to sleep, than answer 
so many questions about the things that are ! 



ON "THE OLD COUNTRY BRASS-BAND" 

NEVER played in a brass band, but my uncle 
did and I always went to hear him. He 
played a bass horn. His name was Uncle 
George. When he was not playing in the 
band — he played seldom — he ran a country 
store and sold everything from gunpowder 
to molasses. He could not keep, therefore, a first-class 
bass-horn lip. And after he had juggled a half-dozen 
mowing machines and handled a ton or two of bar-iron 
and steel, his fingers were not very nimble on "Comin' 
thru the Rye." 

The band reorganized once a year, in July. Its 
purpose was to run an excursion on the "fast and safe 
ocean-going barge 'Yosemite' to Boothbay Harbor or 
Fort Popham, with music by the Bowdoinham Brass 




202 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

Band." It took about two weeks for the band to get 
up its personnel and its lip. It met in the Grand Army- 
hall for rehearsals. There were two things that filled 
a boy's heart with glee — when the fire-engine played 
once a month, and when the band was getting ready for 
its annual excursion. One was as wet as the other. 

The band always played a piece called "The Basso's 
Pride." My Uncle George was the basso and the pride 
was all his. It consisted of a solo of three grunts and 
a dying wail. That is the way it struck me. When- 
ever the band approached this tour de force of Uncle 
George, my heart stopped and did no business. Uncle 
George would lay down his basso ; look around to see if 
the crowd was watching and that all was still ; he would 
pick up his horn, get inside of it; then his eyeballs 
would begin to stick out and out and out; his back 
would arch like a tom-cat in a fight; his hair would 
rise and then with tremecndous power would emit 
'Toom-pah — Poom-pah ! Ugh-ugh-ugh ! P-o-o-m-pah ! 
Ugh-ugh-woof ! Um-pah-" and then "do-re-mi ! Oom- 
pah." And then his eyeballs would recede and his hair 
fall and he would stop and take down his bass-horn 
and wipe his brow. The solo was over; the liquid 
melodies were no more. "The Basso's Pride" was 
ended. It was, indeed, beautiful. 

I liked to see the band assemble on the morning of 
the excursion. It came from "The Ridge ;" "Abbakill- 
dassett," Carter's Corner and the Landing. They 
rarely got over eighteen out, with instruments, includ- 
ing a boy with cymbals. The uniform was architec- 
turally abrupt. It was cut before it shrunk. I have 
seen pants that musically speaking were arpeggio. 
In other words the legs were arpeggio — not cut simul- 
taneously. They were coloraturo in a large and sym- 
pathetic way ; red caps ; blue coats ; green pants and 
yellow trimmings — a sort of passionate uniform inten- 
sifying the atmosphere of the players. When you 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 203 

heard the band play one of its three tunes — ^the "Girl I 
Left Behind Me," which they always played as the 
noble "Yosemite" swung into the restricted Cathance, 
you felt so darn bad about the girls that you forgot 
the music. 

The E-flat cornet player was red-headed. His red 
cap and his red hair and his red face and his freckles 
made me very much concerned for spontaneous com- 
bustion. He played con expressione. When he arose 
to give the preliminary warble for a tune he went thru 
some gymnastics, believe me. He literally girded his 
loins for battle. He tested the compression in his 
cornet by blowing thru the air vent in the side. Then 
he thumped it up against the railing of the barge 
"Yosemite" to see if some bad little boy had put a 
doughnut in the bell. Then he blew in the mouth a 
little easy to see if the suction was all right and she 
could get her gas. Then he patted the side of the 
comet and "over it softly his warm ear laid" to get 
the music of the corn-fields and the summer winds. 
Then he lifted his head eager, alert, majestic, and 
maestro-like. And then would swell out "The Basso's 
Pride" aforesaid. 

People came for miles to hear that parting tune. 
It was the mingled sweetness of barnyard, hayfield, 
grocery-store and all the financial institutions of the 
town, viz., the cashier of the bank. Uncle George did 
his darndest. Superhuman sounds led up to the bass- 
solo. Chords never heard on land, but reserved for 
storms at sea swelled over the placid Cathance and the 
shores took up the echoes. The clarinet wailed and 
the drums rattled and roared. The altos altoed on 
their toes and the piccolo squealed like a storm thru 
the lee braces. And then lo! It was still! As still 
as tho someone had said "Peace!" and then Uncle 
George had the floor. 




204 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

I can see nothing but his eyeballs gradually 
emerging from his countenance ; and hear nothing now, 
but that glorious "Oom-pah!" Four notes this time 
and a dying grunt. Nothing ever surpassed it; 
nothing ever will. Uncle George should have been a 
bass-soloist and nothing else! 



ON "MORE ON THE OLD BRASS BAND" 

HE OLD country band still echoes down the 
corridors of time, especially in my corre- 
spondence. Every day or two some one 
writes me about the old Bowdoinham band, in 
terms of reminiscence, sweet and suggestive. 
Yesterday, a letter came from Wellesley, 
Mass., about the old Bowdoinham Band and I would 
enjoy other reminiscences of similar nature about 
other old country bands, for they seem as music "faint 
and clear" from other days. 

This friend says that after my Uncle George was 
compelled to give over the solo part of "The Basso's 
Pride," on account of his business, rather than because 
of any lack of lip or artistry, he was replaced by a local 
barber named Evander ("Van") Thomas, who under- 
took the bass-horn. "Van" not only did the village 
barbering, but he also sold confectionery, cigars, ice- 
cream, lemonade and hair-restorer. Van would come 
direct from a shave or a hair-cut and serve you a lemon- 
ade or an ice-cream; so that his delicatessen was not 
always bald-headed. But as he said, playfully, "We 
charge nothing extra for hairs in the lemonade." I can 
remember him well, for he cut my hair once; and I 
recall that at the time he was studying a piece of music 
set on the shelf under the looking-glass, meanwhile he 
snipped off portions of my scalp and ears. But as he 
said, "I will make it the same price and not charge you 
anything for the extra close cut." He was a fair and 
generous barber. 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 205 

Van's musical capacity was, of course, not within 
my ken, but my Wellesley friend says "it was marvel- 
ous, for Van had no idea of time." If the band started 
off before he was ready (i.e., before he had spit and got- 
ten his head thru the hole in the horn), he could not 
find the place on the music. All he could do was to begin 
at the beginning and do his best to catch up. Usually 
he came out about eight "oom-pah's" behind and Van 
never omitted one of them. He played his whole piece 
from beginning to end. In other words, he "done his 
full duty." 

Another character was Henry Williams. He had 
played the fife in the Civil War. He also chawed 
tobacco and drooled a lot. His notes were, therefore, 
liquid. It was a wonder how he could chew tobacco, 
hold his quid and play "Marchin' Through Georgia" at 
the same time. Henry has long since been gathered to 
his fathers. Peace to his ashes. He is probably now 
playing the flute by the side of the River of Life, and a 
golden flute, too, with, we trust, a complete plumbing 
and sewer system attached. 

William Douglass was the snare drummer of this 
band. Mr. Douglass has long since passed on, so that 
it may do no harm to refer to his personal appearance. 
He was over six feet tall, very spare, as one-sided as a 
postman and gifted with a very large musical and ex- 
ternal ear — in fact, a pair of them. My Wellesley 
friend says that William's ears had neither "serrations 
nor corrugations," but had a well-defined cartilage run 
thru the outer edge like the string thru a pair of paja- 
mas to keep them from falling. There is no greater 
physical trouble than "falling of the ears." John Bib- 
ber, who used to live in Bowdoinham, said that William 
could lie down in one ear and cover himself up with the 
other. Now, of course every reader knows that when 
a band starts out to march, it has method. The leader 
gives one toot on his horn; waits two or three beats 



206 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

according as the time be three-four or four-four, and 
then he gives two toots and then the snare drummer 
(I'd give my scanty hope of heaven to be a boy again 
and a snare drummer in a band) must roll the drum 
for one or two half-measures, winding up with two 
staccato beats and then *'Hoop-la ! Away they go ! 
Basses grunting, piccolos squealing, cornets boasting, 
clarinets singing, drums rum-tumming." Everybody 
marching away, left foot f or'rard ! 

William was a moderate thinker and mover. His 
transmission was poor. The preliminary toot usually 
found William unready and three to five measures be- 
hind. So the band would start off, some marching, 
some playing, some waiting and the leader would toot 
a reverse action and Mr. Douglass would roll the drum 
about ten measures to the rear ; and Van would lose his 
place and start off way behind and Henry Williams 
would lose his warble and yet we all would say "What 
lovely music." It was lovely. I swear it. 

There was once a drum corps in Harpswell that was 
made up of a one-armed bass-drummer and three hare- 
lipped fifers. My Wellesley friend says that when 
they played "Marching Through Georgia," it sounded 
like an echo from the caves of Aeolus, where they breed 
wind. 



WHEN BEUNDA SPEAKS A PIECE" 

HE following lines were read at a Christmas 
Tree in Auburn, as the outcome of an excel- 
lent recitation on Christmas Eve, by the little 
girl referred to. It is true that the reflex 
action of the giggling nerve of the little girl 
did interrupt the recitation for about ten 
minutes, in which the audience was affected similarly 
and all gave way to the contagion ; but under the stimu- 
lus of a promised dollar in thrift-stamps, the little girl 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 207 

rounded to and accomplished her task. It shows how- 
coin can conquer even cachination. The lines sub- 
joined were written immediately after the affair and 
were read at the presentation of the thrift-stamps on 
the following day : 

'Twas the night before Christmas, when Belinda got 

ready 
To speak her swell piece before going to beddy, 
Her eyes shone like stars and the hair on her heady 
Stood out round her ears like a rain of confetti. 
When the folks were all gathered, her Uncle Bill, 

said-he 
"Now, Belinda, begin; and keep your face steady." 

So she drew in her feet and placed them just straight, 
Tucked her fingers and thumbs in her gown at the plait. 
And she lifted her chin and gazed straight at the 

ceiling 
And prepared to recite, with expression and feeling ; 
And her face like a rose, with never a smirch 
She drew up like a Deacon, just going to church. 
And she stood up so straight, with never a wiggle. 
You'd have said, "Here's a child that simply CAN'T 

giggle." 

But — giggles just live in a little girl's skin. 

They hide in the dimples, just over her chin, 

And they play in the pastures where happiness lies 

Just under the lashes that shelter her eyes. 

And they always go romping and cutting up shines 

When a good little girl is reciting her lines. 

Try as hard as she can to keep her face straight 

The giggles will come; just as sure as the fate. 

When Belinda had arrived at "Not Even a Mouse" 
The giggles came out, each as big as a house. 
And they popped out of her dimples and tickled her 
nose 



208 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

And they danced on her ears and they wiggled her toes, 
And they twinkled her eyes and they waggled her chin 
And they ran out 'round the room and they ran back 

again, 
And by the time that old Santa, with his "little round 

belly" 
Had begun to woggle it round "like a bowl full of jelly," 
The giggles caught mamma "Ha ! Ha !" with a POP ! 
And we roared and we laughed till we never could 

stop. 

Oh! That was a merry and jolly old piece 

"Ha ! Ha ! and Ho ! Ho ! till we never could cease ; 

He ! Hee ! and Hi ! Hi ! Haw ! Haw ! and Whoo ! Whoo ! 

With giggles and shouting and hullaballoo. 

"Oh-h-h dear and Oh m-y ! What a pain in my side." 

And we laughed and we laughed till we like to have 

died; 
Till the giggles got tired and ran back to their cave 
And Belinda's face straightened and once more grew 

grave, 
And she straightened her toes and got her mouth right, 
For : "Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Night." 

MORAL (spoken by donor of the dollar) : 
"I made a trade with Belinda 

Which giggles cannot hinder. 
To wit: If she would "speak" 

She'd get a dollar, Christmas week ; 
She has made her holler, 

Here's her dollar." 




ON "GERMANY'S RECONSTRUCTION" 

FIND in the book of James M. Beck, that 
ardent friend and admirer of Theodore 
Roosevelt, which is called "The Reckoning," 
so many things such as I have recently at- 
tempted to put over in regard to salving the 
German people, that amid the tumult and the 
shouting of "hate," I begin to feel like a prophet. 

Mr. Beck once had a wonderfully lucid controversy 
with Dr. Kuna Francke on the subject of regeneration 
of the German people and their adaptation to a more 
liberal form of government, in which Francke argued 
that the German people were indissolubly wedded to 
their mediaeval despotism, altho he thought that inter- 
nal reforms might make the Imperial will more respon- 
sive to the popular will. 

But how events scatter arguments to the winds! 
And how often racial interests and pride warp man's 
judgment. Let us beware of falling into the same pit. 
Others standing afar often see things more clearly 
than such as Francke. For instance, Mr. Beck calls at- 
tention to a Portuguese poet, Eca de Queiroz, who said 
something twenty-eight years ago that was prophetic 
and wonderful. Queiroz suggested then that the Em- 
peror's assumption of divine inspiration, which is at 
the root of Germany's downfall and disgrace, carried 
the fatal disadvantage that, in the hour when Germany 
met disaster, the people would conclude that the Kais- 
er's much-vaunted alliance with God was the trick of a 
wily despot. That the German people ever accepted 
such claim to divine inspiration was one of the humor- 
ous phenomena of the ages. Even the courtiers of 
Caligula laughed at his claims to divine inspiration. 
How did Germany ever fall for such a doctrine ? Only 
as forced to learn it at the mother's breast. 



210 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

Queiroz wrote this 28 years ago: "Then will there 
not be stones enough from Lorraine to Pomerania to 
stone this counterfeit Moses. William II is in very- 
truth casting against fate those terrible Iron dice,' to 
which the now-forgotten Bismarck once alluded. If he 
win he may have within and without the frontiers, 
altars such as were raised to Augustus ; should he lose, 
exile, the traditional exile in England awaits him — a 
degraded exile, the exile which he so sternly threatens 
to those who deny his infallibility. M. Renan is there- 
fore right; there is nothing more attractive at this 
period of the century than to witness the final develop- 
ment of William II. In the course of years, this youth, 
ardent, pleasing, fertile in imagination, of sincere and 
perhaps heroic soul, may be sitting in calm majesty in 
his Berlin schloss presiding over the destinies of 
Europe — or may be in the Hotel Metropole in London, 
sadly unpacking from the exile's handbag, the battered 
double crown of Prussia and Germany." 

All this goes back to William's blasphemous as- 
sumption of divinity and the teaching of it to his 
people. But a people that has had the mediaeval his- 
tory of Germany, is bound to recover from such folly. 
From an opposition of 312,000 votes in 1881, cast in 
direct defiance of the Emperor's edict, there were 
4,238,919 recorded votes of this calibre in 1912. Is this 
acquiescence ? Are we giving enough credit to the sub- 
merged "saving remnant" that was obliged to fight for 
the land in order to have something to save ? 

I am no sentimentalist about this thing. The Ger- 
man Terror was real and awful. History has never 
known its like before. But was it German ? We want 
to know. Or was it a projection of that people into a 
land of Moloch, into an insane orgie of blood fed by 
high priests wearing the garb of nobility and power? 
Was it not due also to a governmental press, the 
greatest curse of Germany next to the Hohenzollerns ; 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 211 

the obliteration of freedom of speech and the printing 
machine; the prostitution of schools and pulpits that 
misled these people and from which we must rescue 
them? 

Years ago Longfellow wrote : "Not thy councils and 
thy Kaisers, win for thee the world's regard; but thy 
painter, Albrecht Durer, and Hans Sachs, thy cobbler 
bard." Those days may return. "Ever the fiery 
Pentecost girds with one flame the countless host." 
This Pentecost is not for you or me alone, but for all. 
The reconstruction of Germany is the great problem of 
the time and that reconstruction must be for a peace- 
ful nation, a United States of Germany that shall for- 
ever hate war and have no means of prosecuting it for 
many, many generations to come. 



ON "CAPPING THE MAIN TRUCK" 

EARS ago the tall square-riggers used to rear 
their slender masts above my native city of 
Bath, Maine. The riggers worked on them 
getting them ready for the sea. Queer, old- 
fashioned sailormen were these riggers, all of 
whom had sailed many a time across the 
Western ocean as well as the other six of the seven 
seas. I can hear them now, with their deep sea chan- 
ties, "Way Down Rio," "Blow a Man Down," "Biscay, 
O!" and many more, that linger only as faint memo- 
ries of music, long forgot. One sturdy, tarry man, I 
can see now, and his voice I yet can hear across the 
years, rolling above the tide down the river, up the 
river, head-chanteyman was he! 

Boys of Bath used to infest — I use the word after 
due consideration — used to infest the ships as they lay 
at the wharves making ready for sailing off to sea, 
never to return. We swarmed over them, down in the 
holds, in the dark places along the keelson; between 




212 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

decks where the ship smelled of tarred rope and of the 
hard-pine; thru the forecastle and the after-cabins, 
here and there as we willed, provided we kept out of 
the way ; and often we were given a chance to take a 
turn on the huge capstan-bars and help a crew warp up 
a main yard to the music of a chantey. 

But there was one thing that no boy who frequented 
ships could escape, and that was no "duty" either. It 
was a custom, a tradition, a sentimental journey per- 
formed by boys from early days ; a test of courage and 
of high appeal to adventure. And that was "capping 
the main-truck." It must not be the truck of the fore- 
mast or the mizzenmast, but the truck of the mainmast 
— the tiny ball that rests on the tip of the mast, thru 
which the flag-halliards run. Each boy who had the 
privilege of boys on ship-board as the craft lay rigging 
at the wharf, must do the stunt or be forever disbarred 
from the society of the boy of daring and of spunk. 
"Coward" and worse were the anathemas toward that 
boy forever after among the boys — and the riggers 
were not slow in helping on the custom, either. 

I have often thought of that duty in years since 
then — mother's little boy daring an adventure that 
might well test many a man of courage and derring-do, 
hazardous and not to be approved nowadays. Fairly 
piercing the skies, lifted the taper-like masts, swaying 
in the winds, rocking to the wave, over the dark, swift- 
running tide and the cruel deck below, littered with its 
machinery and pierced by its open hatches. If other 
boys were like me, it was no place for mother's little 
fair-haired boy of fourteen. Many a boy who went the 
way up the tall masts, did a feat as great as going over 
the top — and what is more, he did it purely on his own 
courage, not in the company of others, giving him sup- 
port. I can seem to see myself, very tiny in those 
days, quite as another person, given the test, reaching 
into the main shrouds and climbing the ratlines to the 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 213 

lubber-hole — a pathetic picture, surely, if he looked as 
he felt, full of fear and yet ever going on. Some boys 
took to the lubber- hole — but it was only an evasion, 
not the fullest victory, so, out he swings over the deck 
almost horizontal and up over the crest to the first 
landing place on the main cross-trees. Up here the 
wind blows about his flapping little knee-breeches. 
Surely mother would be frightened now. Far above 
rises the tiny ball of gold, almost in the infinite blue. 
He well may pray for help ; for no boy will call him back 
or say "that's enough." He simply MUST go on. He 
never knows how he did it — parched mouth, beating 
heart, trembling knees, ringing ears, little hands fairly 
sinking into each rope with the energy of fear ; and at 
length he stands pressed against the ropes, in panic, 
at the second station of his journey. 

No boy knows how he did it the first time. He only 
knows that he went on and on and on and finally 
reached the goal ; putting his little cap on the gold ball ; 
waving it over the earth and the river and the tiny fig- 
ures below, whose cheers came faintly up to the dizzy 
height. He has a distinct memory of looking over the 
city; down the river toward the sea and hearing his 
beating heart, in rapture at accomplishment, and feel- 
ing himself say to the little chap whose soul had seem- 
ingly been separated from his physical body, "Good 
Boy ! You have done it." And that boy was I. 

What was it good for? I will tell you. It was ac- 
complishment. It was forcing the body to yield to the 
soul. It was compelling fear to give over to superior 
force. It was teaching a boy never to say "I can't;" 
but rather, "I will." It was putting him into the class 
of those who "do things." It was initiation into the 
society of the American Boy. Many a time, since 
then, when I have faced difficulties that seemed un- 
surmountable as that mast, I have said to myself 
proudly, "I capped the Main Truck." I can do this 
thing also ! 




ON "HAUNTED ROOMS" 

HAVE memories of a little old room, in a little 
old house that I roamed thru as a child, 
touching here and there sacred things, tim- 
idly and as a wayward child, forbidden of the 
spot, as once, indeed, I was. 

The pictures on the wall shine dimly, and 
I see them not so plainly as I see the oval glass globe 
with the wax-flowers in it, the full-rigged tiny ship 
that sat on the old marble-topped table, and I can smell, 
too, the faint, musty odors of a closed room and the 
far-off scent of lavender and see the light struggling in 
thru the blinds that shut out the sun from fading the 
old ingrain carpet. 

This room, so common to old homes in New Eng- 
land, was the parlor, with never a use except its setting 
aside for great happenings, connected with death, re- 
ligion, ministers, and visits from personages. Its stiff- 
legged cane-seat chairs, its hair-cloth sofa, its rocker 
with the silk tatting pinned to its hair-cloth back, the 
carved teeth of the walrus or the whale on the mantel, 
the old-fashioned floral-emblem autograph albums, its 
holy Bible on the center table — this was a sanctuary 
that no child could profane except, as Bluebeard's little 
boy, liable to find the heads of other adventurous little 
boys, hanging to the hooks of the closet, therein. Ah 
me ! The story of the old parlors ! I have seen them 
once or twice opened for the wedding — ^but in those 
days, every daughter preferred to be wedded under the 
apple-trees; but never was an ancestor "laid out" in 
other place. And so the old parlor brings back nothing 
else so plain as cold, still forms quiet in there, with 
little feet of strange-eyed children tiptoeing in to gaze 
on the face shrunken, and unnatural, amid the scent of 
old-fashioned flowers. Tiny form, too, in little white 
dresses and with golden hair around their faces, once 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 215 

tossing about the place in play, little feet, so soon 
stayed in the race of life! "In the dim chamber, 
whence but yesterday passed my beloved, filled with 
awe I stand, and haunting loves fluttering on every 
hand whisper her praises who is far away," said John 
Hay. And it is all very true, of old parlors. 

Very like haunted rooms in the memory are they. 
Full of strange, half-forgotten things. I doubt not 
every person who does me the honor of reading this has 
one of these rooms in memory if he be fifty years of 
age. They were the tribute of our fathers to social cus- 
tom, the deference paid to the solemnities of life. To 
come into being! It might happen anywhere. To go 
from life — equally so. But the last memorial must 
have a place to fit the occasion. And so they set aside 
the best for this last. Here also all ultimate treasures 
of life went. Here the strange things that came from 
overseas, especially in seaport towns, were stored; the 
prized oflferings brought with care from the far East in 
ships by those long since dead. The housewife her- 
self rarely stepped within its portals and then only for 
careful dusting and in search of the evasive moth, 
which might corrupt. Here she looked with pride 
upon her best hoarding; on works of art, of doubtful 
value, that, to her, satisfied the longing of a soul that 
sought better things than kitchen or pantry could 
afford. Here she locked her woman's heart. Here 
she hung her best dress; here she kept her wedding 
secrets; her sentiment unrevealed; her womanly 
dreams ; her romances ; her visions ; all her memories of 
herself as a girl-bride. Here grandmothers came 
sometimes and wept. Here all mourning was done for 
death, the room being opened in sorrow, as the upper 
chamber, in which wept the father, for his son 
Absalom. 

Haunted rooms! How many of them have you? 
All rooms of tragedy, in life and death — the places 



216 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

where souls have passed, where life has come, where 
weddings have been, where the little white bassinet 
has stood, where the first-born has started on the long 
journey most quietly. She is very little and the roads 
are lying in wait for her stirring feet. You never for- 
get the scene. It is full of pictures, of the sun on the 
floor, the firelight playing from the fire-place, the 
flowers in the vase, the evening lamp ! 

And so, tonight, I am approaching once again the 
little old parlor. I turn the knob and peer within. It 
is dark and still. The light from the other room 
streams over the threshhold. Do I hear the voices of 
them who once were there! Maybe. But I am not 
; fraid. I am but happy, if so it be. 



ON "LOVING THE SCHOOLMARM" 

OU have been in love, but you never loved any- 
one as you did a certain schoolmarm when 
you were a shock-ihaired, freckle-faced school- 
boy a good many years ago. Some of them 
you hated from the first with a fierce and 
consuming hate, but one of them you fell for 
and you loved — oh, how you loved her. 

Ten to one she was fat and had red cheeks and 
smooth hair and her figure ! Ye gods ! What a figger ! 
When she came into school for the first time your 
heart stood still. You were consumed with passion! 
You could not see straight. You couldn't recite ! You 
couldn't read — you couldn't think. Here was Venus — 
only you didn't know anything about any Venuses; — 
here was Hebe and Ganymede. Here was Cleopatra 
and Helen of Troy. Here was your chance! If you 
were very good and noble and brave perhaps she would 
fall in love with you and then no knowing what might 
happen. You loved her. 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 217 

There is no adoration like the boy-love, aged ten to 
thirteen. It dares all heights, even twenty-eight years 
of maidenhood. It is probable that she was bordering 
on the bank of thirty years — when the maid steps over 
the brink into old-maid terrain. As for you, she was 
just right. She was your fate if you could only 
impress the fact on her that you were a very unusual 
boy. You would study hard ; graduate in a very short 
time; save her life from a runaway horse; or thru a 
hole in the ice; or you would go to sea and be gone a 
few weeks and come home with several million dollars 
and then you would clasp her in your arms and would 
whisper love to her and she would be yours. Or you 
would become a great general in some war and win her 
from the enemy and the wedding would be attended 
by all of the nobility. 

You are really doing very well. You have begun to 
study. She notices it and sends you on errands, her 
dulcet voice setting your heart to thumping tremend- 
ously as she calls out, "William! Please come for- 
ward." You have no doubt for the instant that she 
will propose elopement, then and there, conquered by 
your manly graces. She wants you to take a note to 
some other teacher in some other school. You go on 
tip-toes and do not stop on the way. Things are 
coming along. You keep on dreaming. You will find 
her out some night helpless, in the fierce winter 
storm. She will be lying exhausted in the snow and 
you will be coming along; tripping gaily thru the five- 
foot drifts, brushing the snows away like a rotary plow. 
You will see her fair form reclining before you. You 
will lift her 187 pounds like a feather — you who weigh 
73 lbs. You will carry her fainting thru the storm. 
She will be rescued. Nothing doing but wedlock. 

If you can be called to the front for some minor 
offense and get a seat under the schoolmarm's desk — 
it is not so bad. Good behavior does not seem to bring 



218 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

about the wedding-bells, so you will be a devil. You 
can get the seat all right. There is usually a waiting- 
list under the schoolmarm's desk. But you are per- 
sistent and you get there. It is dusty but you are near 
her. You become careless in your lessons. You get 
a licking from her. Excellent ! Never hurt a bit. A 
whaling from those fair hands — a pastime! Come 
again. A man can't be bothered with arithmetic when 
passion storms thru his veins like a roaring flame thru 
a burning city. It is tragedy. Many a boy has known 
it — schoolmarms with plump figures, neat shoes and 
spring gowns having no conception of the amorous- 
ness flaming around them in evil-smelling boys. You get 
morose at home. Nobody understands you. Your 
father and mother don't understand you. You are 
about tired with life anyway. Something has got to 
happen pretty darn quick. 

And it does happen. Some day a red-headed 
farmer comes to school and calls for the schoolmarm 
with a red sleigh and a good stepping horse. She 
blushes all over. He gets her to let school out earlier. 
He carts her off. Another boy says, "It's her feller." 
He knew. You contemplate suicide vigorously. Next 
day when she licks you you kick at her shins — those 
erstwhile darling shins garbed in white. Hooray! 
It is all over and you are redeemed. You are again 
happy. You hate the teacher. Now for study and fun ! 




ON "THE DOG ON THE BRIDGE" 

DOG was coming over North Bridge in Lewis- 
ton yesterday noon. I say he was coming — 
he was not coming very fast because he was 
afraid. He was a fine-looking, long-eared 
hound, and as he walked along the bridge, his 
eyes caught the gleam of the river far below 
thru the cracks between the planking, and at once, to 
his eyes, the cracks widened and the boards narrowed 
and there he was hanging, between life and death, as 
he saw it, crouching and whining and picking his way 
from plank to plank. 

It was all a matter of perspective. The dog had 
his nose and eyes too near to the ground. He failed 
of a proper angle of observation. A young woman 
passed us as I was trying to toll the dog along. Her 
head was high. She wore ear-rings ; had golden hair ; 
was looking pretty fine, thank you; marching off in 
short skirts and greenish yellow hose all the world like 
a couple of inverted Poland Water bottles. She never 
saw any river under the bridge. The poor dog could 
see nothing else. 

We get a great deal of worry by not looking at 
things in a larger way than we sometimes do. If you 
hold a silver dollar up close to your eye, you can see 
nothing but the dollar. If you hold a doughnut up 
against your eye, hole in front, you miss the doughnut. 
There is a great art in life in focusing your troubles as 
well as your joys. It is better to look at a wild beast 
from a distance than to go up and look him in the eye. 
He may run off and never come your way, in the first 
case. In the second case, he may bite you. A lion in 
the offing is not the whole world. A lion in arms, tail 
up, six feet away, may be the end of the world. 

And further — what a folly to see things only as 
things. The dog saw the water, but not in relation to 



220 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

the bridge nor did he see the bridge in relation to the 
safe conduct of society across the river. There are 
many people whom this war has made ill by mere fore- 
boding. I do not mean those who have loved ones in 
danger — that is another matter. I refer to those 
persons who see nothing in the war but the water 
flowing under the bridge ; nothing but the distance that 
the world may plunge. They have their eyes too close 
to the war. They should see that the war is a fore- 
ordained end of a wicked philosophy — the philosophy 
of the Superman. They should see that in the great 
movement of world evolution, this war is but a chap- 
ter — the chapter of regeneration and readjustment. 
They should see that it is not the end of society, but 
the beginning of a new society, better than the old. 
Terrible as it is, we must not look at it as of this age 
only. It is the medicine of a world that is to endure 
thruout the ages. 

You may apply this plan in every-day life very 
sensibly. Half of the troubles that men and women 
get into are from not lifting their heads and looking 
over the situation before they decide to boil over with 
anger. In all quarrels there are two sides. Try to see 
them both. We get into a lot of difficulty by pre- 
judging the motives of others. We make a lot of 
mistakes by deciding for ourselves how other people 
are likely to decide for themselves. We may well 
decide to look about a bit ; see what is under our feet ; 
feel the tread of the planks under us ; watch the yellow- 
haired girls marching bravely on ; consider that if you 
fall you will have to crawl thru a pretty small crack 
and let it go at that, with an appeal to the best judg- 
ment you have. 

But whatever you do, get your perspective. Do not 
blind yourselves with troubles or fool yourselves look- 
ing thru the hole in the doughnut. It takes equanimity 
to preserve equilibrium. 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 221 

And after the dog got off the bridge, he barked and 
capered and ran away like the wind. You see! He 
had been delayed on his journey by his fancied 
troubles. If you see the point — it's yours, gratis. 



ON "WOMAN" 

INCE one may never foresee all of the state- 
ments of a woman, the wisest policy is not 
to take the trouble to see any of them. 
Woman's cruelest revenge is often to remain 
faithful to a man. Women should remem- 
ber their origin and constantly think of 
themselves as a supernumerary bone. As women 
always know their own greatness, it is their smallness 
that we should divine. A woman's logic is remarkable 
in its simplicity; it consists in expressing one idea 
only one eye, but she had a great heart. 

A man tells what he knows, a woman tells what is 
pleasing; a man talks with knowledge, a woman talks 
with taste. A man never knows how to live until a 
woman has lived with him. The Queen of Sheba had 
only one eye, but she had a great heart. 

"I shall not decide what is the first merit of woman ; 
but ordinarily the first question which is asked about 
woman is, "Is she beautiful?" The second, "Has she 
wit?" There is nothing good about woman, except 
what is best in her. A woman may be homely, ill- 
shaped, ignorant, but ridiculous, never. A woman 
betrays you, she kills you, but she cries for you. Yet 
woman is the crime of man ! She has been his victim 
since Eden. She wears on her flesh the trace of six 
thousand years. There are women who have made 
themselves miserable for life, for a man whom they 
have ceased to love, because he has badly cut his nails 
or badly taken off his coat in company. A man is 
therefore responsible for his entire wife. 



222 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

The one who may govern a woman, may govern a 
nation. Yet you should have a horror of instruction 
of woman for the reason so well understood in Spain, 
that it is easier to govern a people of idiots than a 
people of learned men. Politics in married life con- 
sists of three principles: The first is, never believe 
what a woman says; second, try to understand the 
spirit of her actions; and third, do not forget that a 
woman is never so talkative as when she keeps silent, 
and never so active as when she is at rest. Women 
possess better than men the art of analyzing the two 
human sentimeuts with which they are armed against 
us. They have the instinct of love, because it is their 
life, and of jealousy because it is the only means which 
they have to rule over us. And yet the first and most 
important quality of woman is sweetness. All of the 
reasons of a man are not worth one sentiment from a 
woman. A homely woman, who is also good, is an 
angel and should be beatified. A beautiful woman, 
who is also good, should have four pairs of wings and 
two motors. A homely woman may be wicked, but she 
is never silly about it. And a beautiful woman can 
never be silly, provided the man is sufficiently in love. 
Beauty covers a multitude of sins. 

As to woman's wisdom! Women should never be 
permitted to go to church. What sort of conversation 
can they hold with God? In what way are women in- 
ferior to men? Is it not the fact that they shook 
before him the tree of science? The Greeks who 
created all the gods, symbolized wisdom by Minerva. 
Atheism is the horizon of bad consciences. There 
never was a woman atheist. Thanks to Eve, who 
shook the tree of science, women know everything 
without having learned anything. In wisdom, all of 
the Eves and Magdalenes are novels of which one 
should read only the prefaces. To read all the chap- 
ters would take too long. To skip pages is risky. Yet 
one who has read the book called woman, knows more 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 223 

than the one who has grown pale in libraries. Ulti- 
mately, woman is the reason of man. If it be woman 
who shows the way to heaven, it is woman who makes 
one love earth. And nevertheless, there are women 
who are only gowns. What are you going to do about 
it? Keep a bulldog? 

And of woman's love, a million words would be but 
as one, compared to the words written of it. On the 
maternal bosom, rest the wit of nations, their preju- 
dices and their virtues — in other words, human civili- 
zation. In the thought of God there are only two 
vvomen to be involved in the life of a man: his mother 
and the mother of his children. Many women live 
and die by the heart. There are men ; there is woman. 
Woman is queen of creation. A woman's real love is 
like piety. It comes late in life. A woman is rarely 
devout or in love at twenty. Women wish to be loved ; 
and when they are, they are often annoyed or worse. 
They flirt; to flirt is to love, in water-colors. Love is 
poetry, but marriage is an exact science. Some women 
marry from tradition and then wake up to find it per- 
dition. If you are going to love, pass up your judg- 
ment. Finally, woman and her love and all that, are 
the Alpha and the Omega, hell and paradise, good and 
evil, the fall and the redemption. 

There ! Think over that. It is strictly a collabora- 
tion, out of my note book, culled from reading and 
selection. Each of them is an epigram. They are 
strung together, like pearls and paste, on the same 
string. They are good and bad indifferently. A few 
of them I wrote myself. They are no worse or better 
than the others. And probably no more or less true. 
If you sniff at any one of them remember, you may be 
sniffing at Baudelaire, or Anatole France, or Paul 
Sabatier, or Voltaire, or Jean Jaques, the old dear; or 
at Ben Franklin, or at Thackeray, or at Solomon, or at 
the Book of Judges. So bear with me for a bit of fun ; 
and tomorrow, I will write strictly of moral things. 




ON "GIVING ADVICE, GRATIS" 

LADY friend of mine is in trouble. She went 
to the doctor the other day for purposes of 
pulchritude. She is a comely lady, anyway, 
and needn't have worried. 

But she went ; and came back to her home 
in one of these cities — I prefer not to locate it 
too closely — with two bottles of medicine ; one was pink 
and the other was greenish. One was to make the hair 
grow on her beautiful head ; the other was to make the 
flesh of her fair arms yet more peachy, and remove all 
hirsute disfigurement. 

Women are often careful. Some women are very 
much more careful than some men. Carelessness is 
not a sex-characteristic. I have seen men so thought- 
less that they couldn't remember that socks should be 
of one color, i.e., that no well-dressed man should wear 
one green, one blue. No woman would do that. 
Women rarely are careless about color. They usually 
harmonize tints. But when a woman IS thoughtless 
she can beat man all the way from sole to dandruff. 
This friend of mine is so busy about being kind and 
generous, as a rule, that she forgets details. So when 
she got home and told about her visit to the beauty- 
doctor and about what he said and didn't say, and had 
produced the hair-medicine and the face and arm medi- 
cine — the one warranted to make hair grow and the 
other warranted to remove it, she had only an indis- 
tinct memory of the purpose of each. She wasn't 
quite sure whether the pink or the green produced long 
and luxurious curly locks or removed them, or vice 
versa. 

Said I, "Wallace Maxfield used to make a hair 
restorer and it was green. I wish you had some of 
that, and if I had thought of it in time I could have 
saved you a trip to the doctor ; for his was a wonderful 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 225 

'invigiorator.' We used to treat it very carefully. 
Wallace never handled it without gloves for fear of 
beating out Esau. He got some on his finger-nails 
once and the hair grew out all over them. If he had 
cared, he could have grown hair enough on the end of 
his thumb to have made it do duty as a shaving-brush. 

"Mercy !" exclaimed the lady. 

"Yes," continued I, "he got some by accident on the 
doorknob of his old shop once — one of those white 
china doorknobs, and he had to shave the doorknob 
every day for a week until the effect of the stuff wore 
off. That was greenish in color. Then he had a 
detergent — I think it was pinkish. That worked just 
as well the other way. He could wave a bottle of this 
over a hair mattress, then : Excelsior ! there would not 
be a hair in it. Customers used to bring old buffalo 
coats in to be treated. He could drop about twenty 
drops of this on a patchy old buffalo coat and take the 
hair off of it smooth and clean where partially worn, 
and then by applying the "invigorator" which was 
greenish, the buffalo hair would grow within twenty 
minutes, restoring it to its original beauty. Trouble 
was the stuff was too powerful. I wish — " 

"Then you think that probably the greenish is the 
prescription for my head," said the lady. "Then that 
settles it." 

It did settle it, and so far as I can see, settled it all 
right. The lady called at our house Sunday to see me 
and ask somewhat excitedly if I saw any difference in 
her appearance. I told her that she looked beautiful, 
as usual, but that perhaps there was a bit of extra gloss 
on her upper lip and was it swollen, and what was the 
matter with the high lights on her nose, and did she 
have a cold that made her eyes look a little swollen. 
And what was — 

"Apart from that I'm all right?" exclaimed she. 
"Well, I want you to know that you told me all wrong. 



226 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

I've been using hair medicine on my face and skin 
remedy on my hair, and I'm so worried I don't know 
what to do. The pink medicine is 'invigorator,' as you 
call it, and the other is the opposite, and I expect from 
all you have said to have whiskers on my face and a 
nice, glossy, peachy skin on the top of my head, and 
hair on my arms and a mustache, and I'll have to shave 
and wear a wig and — oh, it's all your fault, boo, hoo!" 

This is my situation and the state of mind in which 
I find myself this Monday morning on returning to my 
duties. The moral that I want to bring to you, dear 
reader, is to beware of my failing, which is giving 
advice, except for pay. More friendships have been 
broken by advising persons unprof essionally on mooted 
points, than any other way. If you make a charge it 
is differsnt. You are then protected by the law of 
caveat emptor. You know there was Cassandra. 
Apollo loved her, but she threw him down. The god got 
mad and he made Cassandra a confirmed advice-giver, 
free, too, without charge, a she-prophet; with this 
condition, nobody would ever follow her predictions. 
She was always dead right. She knew, did Cassandra, 
but nobody believed her. Most of us are unlike 
Cassandra. And that's the danger. The New Year 
is on! Let's all take a brace and only give advice as 
a matter of business, at so much per diem or per advice, 
office hours and all that. 

As yet there is a chance for you to avoid danger and 
perhaps for me to escape. The lady is not yet bald 
nor does she bear any resemlblance to Charles E. 
Hughes; but if she develops later and you follow my 
fate and it compares with Cassandra, you will see why 
things look gloomy to me. 



ON "OLD PICTURES IN THE JUNK SHOP" 




N A CERTAIN junk-store in Lewiston are two 
pictures in mahogany frames of fifty years 
ago; sturdy faces of a man and a woman, 
looking out on the busy street. They are 
photographs of a fine up-standing, prosperous 
couple, some countryfolk of a generation 
long since gone. 

One cannot pass this shop without seeing these 
pictures, thus disposed for sale among the other junk; 
and thus seeing them one must feel a sense of sadness 
at this desecration of some home that from the look of 
these faces, must have been once prosperous and 
happy. 

What fate has sent the portraits of these people 
into such a shop, to be put up for sale? Is it not 
monstrous that relatives and friends did not consign 
them at least to the happier fate of destruction? 
There must have been some heir or residuary legatee 
who had the power silently to lay away these venerable 
faces and let them be forgot, if there be none, who 
now would care to recall them. How short is human 
lo-^^e ; how soon passes consideration even for the mem- 
ories of the dead ! 

The other day we saw a string of gold beads in the 
possession of a great granddaughter. She had small 
regard for them and spoke slightingly of them. But I 
could recall the picture of a fragile little grandmother, 
sitting in a low chair by a window in a warm mid-sum- 
mer afternoon. A huge willow tree brushed the little 
window to the west and the low hum of bees was in a 
hive just outside, among all the clover tops that the 
world could seemingly ever grow. There was caraway 
in the tall, straggling bushes, by the side of the willow- 
trunk, and away and away over the hills and beyond 
their purple rims, was the World, to me. The Gospel 



228 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

Banner, a stout Universalist weekly, lay in her lap and 
her hands were folded. Around her neck was this 
string of gold beads — ^^and never day or night was she 
without them. They should have been buried with 
her as she sat hands folded, all mysteries solved, at 
Peace. 

And so it is with the old pictures and the old photo- 
graph albums that are found kicking around in the old 
book-stores or piled away in attics. If they could 
speak and the beating hearts once more be revived 
and with them all the pleasure, love and hope that once 
these photographs carried, we should hear stout 
objection to the neglect to which they are now sub- 
jected. These pictures that are found in the old junk 
shop — it takes little to re-create the scene as the old 
father and mother went happily away to the photogra- 
pher's to have these pictures made, as a memorial to 
loving children. It may have been the consummation 
of some wedding anniversary; some tribute to the 
hanging of the crane in the young manhood and 
womanhood when all of the world lay before them and 
all was bright with love and courage. It takes little, 
as I say, to re-create the happy home ; the evening fire- 
side ; the tender care of children ; the patient labor over 
little frocks and baby-things ; the weary toil for better 
conditions ; the sacrifices for schooling ; the passing out 
into the world of the young ; the loneliness of age ; and 
now this! Better oblivion than the disgrace of the 
junk-shop. 

I should hope that a law might be passed against 
sale of the intimate mortuary things of men — intimate 
pictures, the stones over the graves of the dead. It is 
hard to contemplate what may happen to our own. 
**What song the syrens sang or what name Achilles 
assumed when he hid himself among the women," as 
Sir Thomas Browne says, were easier to know than 
what shall become of us as, looking our best, believing 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 229 

that there are those that love us, we consign ourselves 
to the photographer and send down thru the ages a 
very capable looking simulacrum. We may be very 
proud of it and hope for a tender consideration until 
at least it shall have grown old-fashioned. But the 
pictures that we frame in mahogany and hang on the 
wall and consecrate to the household gods and expect 
to be respected — what mercy is shown by those that 
come after us, if in the hour, when the old home shall 
be broken up and the roof -tree vanish and the soul go 
out of the home, some kindly hand put not the torch to 
the intimate things and lay our mahogany-framed 
likeness on some funeral-pyre to send up in flames 
what was once the spirit of the home. Dust and ashes ! 
Better than a junk-shop and a ten-cent sale! 



ON "THE WOODS OF GOD" 

T IS calling — I can hear it — all over the land 
they are hearing it and, afar off where the 
guns are roaring and the shells are boring 
into the soil of France, they are hearing it — 
the call of the woods of Maine. 

I saw a letter the other day, from a boy 
over there. Said he, "Dad, I am happy over here, doing 
what I feel to be my duty, but, next to seeing you and 
mother, is the desire that I feel to set out with you, in 
the crisp, frosty morning of one of our late October 
days for the good old trip to the woods. We'll have it 
yet, in peace and plenty. And we'll never kill another 
living thing — just the woods, the silent woods, the 
woods of God." 

Yes — it's calling ! Tugging at the heart-strings of 
men, buried half underground in machine-rooms, press- 
rooms, under the hatches of ships; in factories; in 




230 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

counting rooms ; in shops ; in banks ; in schools ; out on 
treeless plains. Only the other day I met a man, deep 
down in the thunder of the roaring presses of a 
Boston newspaper, head-pressman, never saw him 
before; had not talked with him two minutes when, 
finding that I came from Maine, he said: "I go every 
spring to Kennebago to fish, every fall to the woods of 
Maine to sit in the silence and see the big trees. I 
work for that." And his eyes lighted and he was poet, 
philosopher, dreamer all at once, as he is, by the way, 
the star pressman of Boston. 

What is it that calls? It is the lure of perfect 
peace, unstained by man — that is what! When the 
rifle rings and the deer falls and man advances on him, 
with knife to flesh and blood to run — the heaven 
becomes a little hell. But not for long! The trees 
look down in silent contempt; the winds go over softly 
sighing; the chickadee hops along with his old foolish 
plaint; the blue jay chatters in the tall tops ; and under- 
foot — are the silence, slow-gathering moss, deep decay, 
death and birth, unto which man may come in rever- 
ence and depart in peace. This is the lure for them 
that truly love it, this is the call that never will cease 
it3 reiteration. 

The woods of God! Singularly, the most irrever- 
ent feels that. I read the other day a story of three 
men who traveled in mighty places where great trees 
lifted their heads and great hills stood on end and deep 
lakes bosomed themselves in mountain fastnesses. 
One of them was an atheist. For him, there was no 
God. Wherever he went, he explained everything by 
science; scoffing at enthusiasms until his lowly guides 
with nothing but time-worn faiths, were silent. 
Finally they came to a place of surpassing beauty; 
glory piled on glory; peaks in the blue; trees on the 
peaks ; colors of jade and gold and all of the spectrum 
— and they stood in silent awe, until the lowliest guide 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 231 

of all broke the silence with a shout, "Mebbe, sir, there 
ain't no God NOW; but by thunder there WAS once." 

So you feel in the woods. It is a tryst with your 
soul. It is a visit to the shrine of the Most High. It 
is the solitude of the association with the Unseen. 
It is a breath out of the dawn of the hereafter, whence 
Cometh the healing. To sit on a mossy log amid the 
gathering snow-flakes, miles from camp ; to wander in 
the twilight over hard paths and see the rabbit run 
and hear the partridge gathering her brood ; to see the 
colors run in the undergrowth from pale pink to thin 
mauve and bleak gray ; to hear the winds overhead ; to 
feel the smart tug of the frosty night — to see at last 
the lights of camp break thru the forests and be home 
again! It is religion and everything else combined. 

Weariness not often cometh to the flesh alone. It 
is to the intellectual and the spiritual elements of a 
man that it first comes. The "pep" is the first to go 
and that is in the dynamo. In the woods of Maine are 
all the balsams for the healing of the heart of man. 
The chase, if you will, for impulse — the Woods, if you 
seek the real thing for your regeneration. It is the 
"pep" that first comes back to you. And when the big 
woods go — what will men do? We know not. Better 
than drugs are they. Those who determine destinies 
of simple folk must not forget this. Sad the day when 
Nations forget that "Back to Nature" is a primordial 
command. Sad the day — if we do not provide for all 
time, taverns in the forests for the rest of weary mind 
and soul — great forest preserves, parks in primeval 
state, by running waters in deep woods of God. 




ON "MAINE IN AUTUMN" 

HIS is the season when Maine stands on the 
hill-tops looking out over the autumn world. 
She has left the summer highway, the fields 
waving in the sunshine, the brooks running 
sweetly to the sea ; the sea, itself, she has left 
gray and whitening in the winds — ^to stand 
up here, like a woman in scarlet, waiting for the snow- 
flakes to drive her in. 

She is fair above all others, is Maine, in this Octo- 
ber season. No other land compares with her. I have 
seen Colorado in the Autumn, with the yellow aspens 
in the mountain tops. Up crest and down they run, 
ever the same ceaseless yellow of the buttercup. But 
what is that by the side of the hills of Maine ? She is 
like the woman of the Song of Solomon, "Thy lips are 
like the thread of scarlet; honey and milk are under 
thy tongue ; the smell of thy garments is like the smell 
of Lebanon. Awake! O, North wind; come! thou 
South." From hill to hill Maine flaunts her ribands. 
From peak to peak, flames the curve of her lips. In 
valley and on hillsides spread her garments, of all the 
colors of the celestial dye-pots. And there she stands, 
like the apocalypse of a sunset of the gods! What 
pageantry ! what beauty, here in Maine ! 

Autumn! already the first storms of an approach- 
ing winter have swept the land. The black willows 
stand bare along the edges of the river. The last 
summer guest is packing for home. The only sound 
of the outside world is the dull throb of the sportsman's 
gun in the distant thickets and the passing of the auto- 
mobile, loaded with sportsmen bound for the deep 
woods for the big game. The deer have left the fields 
for the forests and are skirting the ridges where the 
beech-trees stand, dun brown or deep yellow in the 
amber light of the October sun. The trout have said 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 233 

good-bye to the angler for another six months. The 
bear is looking over the fields and standing perchance 
on some lonely hill, feeling the tingle of the evening 
approach, that suggests a snug hole in a winter's sleep. 
The air is very still. The fine sound of crickets that 
one hears in September has gone, and no longer the 
late grasshopper rises in clouds under foot. Afar, thru 
a red haze of maple-leaves you may see the smoke of 
some distant towns, but what are towns by the side of 
these hills, clothed in raiment ecstatic, radiant, flaming 
as the fires of the northern lights where the Hyper- 
borean gods are burning brush-fires till all the fire 
departments of Heaven cannot stop them. 

It is not for any writer of halting prose or for any 
minor poet, to describe this glorious land of ours — 
Maine — in October. It seems an anomaly, that when 
poets seek simile, they go to Capri or Ischia or the Vale 
of Chamouni, when they might come up here into the 
vestibule of Heaven, and get the pictures for their 
fancy. The maple-tree, standing red against the green 
of the spruce, whose pyramidal tops rise as out of a 
garden of poppies and roses and all other fervid color, 
is of itself enough to bring one ten thousand miles to 
see. The "clear bright scarlet leaves of the sumac 
hang down like a soldier's sash," said Thoreau. I have, 
myself, seen from the shores of Moosehead a line of ten 
million, million colors stretching forty miles away. 
And I saw it yet again, reflected in the mirrored surface 
of the lake on Whose blue surface the clouds of the sky 
floated! And back of this, piled up, Pelion on Ossa, 
arose great mountains of the same color. And in the 
mirror of the lake the mountains also were painted. 
And my boat floated in color and climbed mountain 
peaks of scarlet and sank into the bosom of flaming 
gardens. And the colors steeped to my very soul ! 

We do not talk enough about this State. We do 
not tell the truth about it. We are like men living 



234 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

among acres of diamonds and not knowing that they 
are beautiful, because they are so common. We say 
as we look at those things that God has given us and us 
alone, "There is nothing in Europe to equal that." 
Foolish man; there is nothing anywhere except in 
Heaven to begin to compare with Maine, in her autumn 
radiance. And I am not so all-fired sure about there 
being anything to equal it in Heaven. 



ON "MAKING OUT YOUR INCOME TAX" 

IGURE it as you please, no man can make out 
an income tax, the first time, and have it 
balance. I have made out mine, recently, 
and know. And today I cannot tell whether 
I owe the government $872.19 or the govern- 
ment owes me $94. I am naturally inclined 
to the latter opinion; but I can't tell until I get 
acquainted with the meaning of fiduciary and amorti- 
zation and can tell the difference between a tax- 
covenant bond and a non-resident alien. 

The point is right here in my income tax : did I con- 
tribute under the vocational rehabilitization act (see 
Sect. E) "to an amount not in excess of 15 per cent of 
net income as computed without the benefit of this 
paragraph, such contributions allowable as deductions 
only if verified by the Commissioner with the approval 
of the Secretary," or did I in the case of buildings 
"allow for the amortization of the cost of such part of 
the buildings as had been borne by the tax-payer." 
It seems to me as tho I did, and then again when I wake 
up, it seems as tho I did not. 

I amble ^long in my study of my income tax and it 
occurs to me that "in cases under paragraph four of 
subdivision A and in case of any income from an estate 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 235 

during the period of administration or settlement per- 
mitted by subdivision (c) to be deducted from the net 
income paid by fiduciary, the tax shall not be paid by 
the fiduciary." If this be so, then it makes some dif- 
ference. 

I was working on my income tax yesterday all by 
myself — with no expert assistance, because I desired 
to find out how the matter struck a common, unedu- 
cated mind. I figured persistently and by adding in 
the amortizations and subtracting the fiduciaries, I 
found that under section (g) Part IV, title "Payment 
of Taxes," I owed the government $872,19. This was 
more than I expected, because I never had $872.19 in 
all my life at one time. The nearest I ever had was 
$400, when I went on my wedding trip, and I had it all 
in one-dollar bills, so as to impress my new wife with 
a plethoric bank-roll. I may say in passing that her 
dream has been shattered. 

The perspiration gathered on my brow as I looked 
at the $872.19 and I read, "In any suit or action 
brought to enforce payment of taxes made due and 
payable by virtue of the provisions of this section, the 
finding of the commissioner, made as hereinunder pro- 
vided, shall be for all purposes presumptive evidence 
of the taxpayer's design, whether made after notice to 
the taxpayer or not." Of course if the "finding" of 
the Commissioner included the finding also of the 
$872.19, it would be all right, but farther on, I notice 
that if neither of us can find it, "all individuals, whether 
acting as lessees, or mortgagors of property, fiduci- 
aries, employers, with interest, annuities, amortiza- 
tions, salaries, compensations, emoluments or other 
gains (not including gain in flesh) who fail to pay, 
shall be sent to jail for a year and punished by paying a 
fine which floats before my dazed eyes so oddly that 
sometimes it looks like $1,000 and sometimes as 
$10,000. 



236 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

It seemed wrong to me to be obliged to pay $872.19, 
not ever having had so much and not being able to 
borrow it, so that for a time it looked as tho I should 
either have to give up writing these "Just Talks" after 
March 10th, or else write them from jail — which would 
be perhaps just as pleasant as writing them where I do 
now. And then I noticed that "If a fiscal-year partner- 
ship ends during a calendar year, the rates for the pre- 
ceding calendar year shall apply to such part of the 
fiscal year as the proportion which such fiscal year 
with the said calendar year, bears to the full fiscal year, 
and the rates for the said calendar year during the said 
fiscal year shall apply to the remainder." 

"If that is so," said I to myself, "it may perhaps 
simplify it." Then I began over again and, using the 
same figures exactly, and adding the fiscal to the 
calendar and subtracting all the amortizations from 
all the fiduciaries; adding in the non-resident aliens; 
taking a due proportion of the remaining consolidated 
invested capital and deducting the amount paid on one 
per centum of the tax-covenant stocks paid at the 
source, and not covered by sur-tax as provided in 
Sect. (2) Table III, I found that the Government 
owes me over $90. I am willing to add a couple of 
fiduciaries and call it square. 

We have lost two valuable employees already from 
figuring income tax. One of them has moved to Porto 
Rico where, according to Sec. 261, the Porto Rican 
Legislature has the power to amend, alter or repeal 
income tax laws. The other man was quietly working 
when his head burst, with a loud report. He died from 
an amortization, combined with an embolism and 
untroubled by emoluments. 




ON "WATCH YOUR STEP" 

PART of these Talks must necessarily be 
biographical, because I know more about 
myself than I know about anyone else, in 
spite of the fact that an anonymous corres- 
pondent who signed herself "One of the 
Brave," told me the other day that I was a 
nanny-goat, or words to that effect, and that I ought 
to go out and take a walk around myself and look 
myself over, having evidently been pampered all my 
life and never knowing what it was to work for a 
living. Good gracious! 

Well ! this one is about a time when I was not pam- 
pered, so far as I can judge. I was eleven years old 
and went barefoot summers and sported a set of 
lingerie consisting of one pair of linen pants, somewhat 
dome-shaped in the rear, and one cotton shirt. It is a 
story of what happens to anyone who does not look 
where he is stepping, and I will place my moral right 
here. Watch your step! If you are an anonymous 
hero, keep out of mischief. If you are a free-roamer, 
keep out of trouble. If you are planning a serious 
step, especially evil, watch out. 

It was my intention to go gunning, on this bright 
and beautiful summer day; but I was lacking two 
things — a gun and ammunition. My uncle had both, 
but was not inclined to be considerate. So I decided to 
turn burglar. That was where I should have watched 
my step. Fathers and mothers, read this to your 
children and show them ME, about to take the first 
step in evil. And be sure to follow me to the finish. 

My uncle kept his ammunition on the top shelf in 
the woodshed. As I was hardly tall enough to put a 
bridle on a goat, he thought it was out of reach. But 
it was not. Under the shelf was a barrel. I secured 
the gun from my uncle's bedroom — false step No. 1. 



238 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

It was loaded. Clutching it .tightly, as a boy will, I 
climbed to the top of the barrel and reached up for the 
ammunition. It was here that I made false step No. 
2. The barrel top was one of those old-fashioned ones 
made a trifle smaller than the barrel and held in place 
on the top by a board nailed across and resting on the 
chines. It upset; did a double turn, and I disappeared 
in the barrel, gun and all. 

Now, if you were taking a first step in crime, what 
sort of a material would you prefer falling into ? Jam, 
maybe! Mine was soft-soap; and I slid into that 
barrel of soft soap, just as slick and just as far as any 
boy ever slid into trouble in all this wide world. I 
never fitted into anything else in all my life, so abso- 
lutely tight and smooth as I did into that soap. It 
came up past — long past, the dome of "them pants." 
It came up past the tail of that cotton shirt. It came 
up past my collar button and, thank the Lord, or I 
would not be a nanny-goat today, it rested just at my 
chin and I was not able to see over the top of the barrel. 

And that was not all. I couldn't climb out. Ever 
try to climb out of the affectionate embrace of a barrel 
of soft-soap? Ever try to dig your toes into the side 
of a barrel of soft-soap? You stand more chance of 
b ing a member of the peace conference. I hollered. 
Nobody heard me. My voice came back, slippery and 
all over lather. I yelled half an hour, no response. 

Then I took step No. 3. I resurrected the gun from 
the depths of the soap and fired it straight at the 
kitchen door. Grandfather and grandmother were 
there! Oh yes! They were there! And a yard of 
soap leaping thru the air and a fine assortment of bird- 
shot went hurtling into the peace of that August after- 
noon. I never knew just what happened. Grand- 
father didn't, either. He says he saw it coming ! The 
shot mercifully spared the old couple, but the soap! 
Oh my! It gave grandpa a shave and a shampoo and 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 239 

a hair-cut and a Saturday night bath and dyed his 
whiskers. It drove grandma into a state of soft-soap 
never before seen in the annals of that town. It killed 
the canary bird and shook the fleas out of the dog. It 
trimmed the cat's whiskers and gave her a facial 
massage. It cleaned the house and changed all of the 
furniture around. It almost lifted the mortgage. 

But it saved my life and preserved me for posterity 
and made me so clean that I have never taken a wrong 
step since. So! Watch your step. 



ON "LITTLE SHAVERS" 

S I WAS going to work the other day I saw a 
"little shaver" standing up against a hydrant, 
waiting for a car to take him to school. I 
can tell a "little shaver" when I see him. He 
is always Somebody's little shaver, bearing 
the marks of somebody's care in sending him 
forth, somebody's kisses on his cheek ! somebody's pal- 
pitating worry as he sets forth; somebody's waiting 
until he returns. 

This little shaver was dressed in a khaki overcoat 
and a khaki billy-cock hat, set on the side of his head 
with much art. Around his neck was hung a canvas 
case, like those in which the doughboys carried their 
gas masks "over there." He permitted me to look into 
it. It held his books, his luncheon, his paper-pad. 
This little shaver was about five years old, I should 
reckon. He made my heart warm and my eyes rather 
moist at the thought of other days and certain moth- 
erly cares of my own. I asked him who "packed his 
kit." He said, "My muvver." 

Little shavers are what induce men and women to 
struggle on seeking something that shall make life 
worth living for little shavers, which will probably be 




240 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

more "little shavers" for sacrificial tears and troubles, 
and so on and on ; for the world is not coming to an end, 
and men and women are to be happier as the ages come 
and as Pentecost draws nigh. Women carry little 
shavers under their hearts. Men carry them in their 
joy and pride. And they send them out as the 
"muvver" had sent this one out, to take their chances, 
just as clean and well equipped as possible, and with 
their sack and scrip all prepared. 

The world also ought to be a sort of mother and 
father to little shavers. They should not be trampled 
on or hurt. The strong who have authority would do 
well to take a look at little boys and little girls going 
to and fro, some to school, some carrying dad's dinner- 
pail, some playing about the street, and remember that 
they are wards of society, of laws, of public service, of 
equities in public domain, of human right, of educa- 
tional advantages, of protection from public evil. In 
every legislative-hall should be a picture of childhood 
in some form. Every year there should be a general 
accounting by State and Nation as to what is being 
done for childhood. Trite enough is the saying : "They 
are the men and women of tomorrow;" but truth is 
often trite and the "ten commandments do not budge" 
no matter how often assailed, nor do they become stale, 
how often repeated. 

We would all like to be "little shavers" all over 
again, would we not, just to tell other little shavers, 
out of our now broadened experience with life, what 
love their parents truly bear them; what toil they 
necessitate; what sacrifices they imply; what anguish 
they occasion ; what worry they bring. We would like 
to tell all boys and girls the duty they owe to mothers ; 
how careful they should be of them, how tenderly they 
should regard them. 

Little shavers ! How stolidly they go about, taking 
all as a matter of course ! Giving little save now and 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 241 

then, when by climbing sleepily into mother's or 
father's arms they pillow weary heads on happy hearts. 
The infinitude of parental love ! What means it, if 
it does not signify the infinitude of the Greater Love 
that a Universal Father bears toward all us "little 
shavers" here below, careless, indifferent, thoughtless, 
but destined to come home some night from the long, 
long school, find the light streaming from the doorway 
of the House and content to pillow a weary head on a 
bosom of infinite love ! If not this, then what does it 
all' mean? What availeth it if love here passes with 
little shavers! 



ON "KILLING THE PIG" 

FTER a period of more or less familiar 
acquaintance with a family pig, the boys in 
our neighborhood came to feel affectionately 
disposed toward him. We used to wander 
instinctively toward the pig-pen in moments 
of abstraction, to nurse griefs and wait for 
the tingle of the hickory in dad's hands to evaporate. 
There was fitness in weeping into a pig-pen. There 
was sociability in the pig's sympathetic grunts of wel- 
come. When all else was against us, it did seem as 
though the pig loved us. At least he never found any 
fault with us — which was more than we could say of 
anyone else about the premises. 

So, when it came pig-killing season, every boy had 
a duty to attend the obsequies far and near. At school 
the commonest question was, "When's your pig goin' 
to be killed?" We kept a list of pig-killings and waited 
them as a mournful, yet eager, festival. Many a tedious 
mile have I walked over roads in the country with 
other boys, on the way to pig-killings. Yet I recall 




242 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

having seen the overt act but once, and then the bloody- 
jowls and the piercing screams of the dying porker 
convinced me that once was enough. It must have 
been the ceremonial, rather than the ceremony, that 
attracted us. I have had the same impressions later 
in certain performances of Oliver Twist, where Bill 
Sykes massacres Nancy. One look satisfied me. 
After that, I preferred to close my eyes and consider 
the thing done, in spite of me. 

Of course, every boy whose own pig was being 
killed, held for the time being autocratic relations to 
the rest of the community of boys. He was host 
ex pigofficio. He was President of the Boy-Snouts. 
He took us around previous to the obsequies, provided 
we arrived in season. He introduced us to the soon-to- 
be-lamented. He called the pig by name and we all 
looked in silence into the unsuspecting, if somewhat 
narrow and contracted, eyes of the pig. We had 
thoughts — at any rate I know I had 'em — on the pass- 
ing of the finite into pork. We gave him a last fare- 
well scratching with the handy hoe. Then the host 
took us around and showed us the shears on which the 
dead was to be elevated ; the boiling vat into which he 
was to be plunged for purposes of tonsorialism. He 
promised certain recondite portions of the pig's 
anatomy to different boys — all except the bladder. 

The arrival of the butcher ; the bustling about many 
things; the goings and comings of men and women; 
the steaming of the great kettles ; the final approach of 
the butcher to the pen; the invariable sudden fear of 
the animal ; the occasional chase around the yard with 
a fat butcher hanging to a pig's tail — all these are 
firmly fixed in memory. Enough! The squeals still 
ring in memory. Alas for the order of the universe 
that says that beasts shall die for the food of a folk ! 
We gathered about the reeking carcass where it lay and 
often wept a tear. "Poor old Buster," said the boy, "I 
won't ever bring you any more dinner." 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 243 

But tears pass. The proper manicuring of a pig is 
something that had a peculiar fascination for the old- 
fashioned boy. I suppose that the modern boy would 
find nothing interesting in it. He cares for nothing 
that he can get for nothing. His ideas are fixed on a 
chummy-roadster and the moving-picture. The simple 
bucolic divertisements of lang syne are old stuff. He 
wouldn't even be interested in an old-fashioned soap- 
making or a corn-husking. He would not swap his 
jack-knife for a pig's bladder. But with most old- 
fashioned boys a dried and properly cured pig's bladder 
was something for which a boy would barter his hope 
of immortality, and not to blame — the hope of immor- 
tality being a matter of future consideration. Most 
old-fashioned boys have blown themselves red in the 
face over the pipe-stem of a pig's bladder, and when 
the job was done have enjoyed nothing else so much as 
the chance to step up behind another boy and give him 
a resounding welt with it behind the ear. 

These are things that it is well to recur to now and 
then, as indicative of the simpler joys of boyhood, in 
the days of simpler life. We are all boys to more and 
more extent. Life in genejral has 'become lequally 
complex. Men and women are no longer satisfied with 
neighborhood matters. But the question intrudes, are 
they any happier now than then? Is life sweeter and 
better, with all of the luxury of the present, than in the 
simple day when it was no trouble "to keep up with 
Lizzie," and when, if you had a pig to kill and a Holy 
Bible on the center table and a barrel of soft-soap, you 
were the people?" 




ON "THE PUSSY-WILLOW" 

AYBE you have already seen children coming 
along the streets that lead homeward from 
the outlying brooks and ponds these March 
days, with arms fuU of pussy-willows, and 
you have felt suddenly tender again toward 
life and considerate of how steadily the calm 
world of Nature pursues her way, unvexed by all 
of the ant-like skurrying to and fro, of man and 
nations of men. Out of the past rise memories of 
yourself as a child searching for the first signs of 
the little furry catkins and eagerly bringing them 
home, to tempt again the old-time miracle of faith; 
that if put where it was exactly warm enough — in 
the cuddly toe of a little shoe by the warm fireside — 
out of the night and all its wonders, might emerge, 
by way of the immaculate conception of the pussy- 
willow, a dear little roly-.poly kitten, with very bright 
eyes and a spiky little tail firmly standing erect, 
waiting there or else rolling over (kitten, tail, and all) 
before the fire when you arose in the morning. Disap- 
pointment never raised a doubt. There was ever a 
reason and ever a failure. 

So we see, each recurring spring, the coming of 
the children, bearing the pussy-willow as a rite and 
religion of childhood, of the spirit of resurrection, in 
the very heart of the world. And the pussy-willow 
has a perfect right, of its own dear little self, to have 
a place of distinction in the episode. For it is first 
on the spot; first of all vegetation to feel the kiss of 
the lovely Sprite that tiptoes first to the brookside and 
along the oozy borders of the ponds. Here, screened 
from March gales and winter snows, in response to the 
touch of spring, the pussy-willow puts off her brown 
winter coat and begins to glisten in the furry little 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 245 

dress that is so soft, warm and beautiful. And it is 
odd that where Spring first finds her way out, there 
she also departs, for, along the borders of the pond, 
the last glimpse of vegetation endures in autumn, as 
it shows first in the spring. 

Another thing that may interest us all about our 
little friend the pussy-willow, is that childhood, every- 
where the world-over, has the same love for it. There 
is not a place in the world where the willow does not 
grow in some form. It is along the equator, in the 
far-off polar regions as far as any vegetation what- 
ever endures of the tree-type, and with many uses, 
from material weaving baskets and reeds, to making 
charcoal and bririging great returns to some people 
who have raised the willow commercially. In olden 
days, it was used instead of the palm in the church 
festivals and appropriatdy as a symbol of the resur- 
rection, for it has strange powers latent within it. 
You can hardly kill a willow twig. Put it away and 
allow it nearly to dry and desiccate and yet put it into 
the earth and give it moisture, and from the bare 
twig will set out roots and buds and it will struggle 
into fresh green again in the bravest and most reso- 
lute way. It has a singular reserve in leaf-buds. It 
keeps many of them against day of need. If fire 
sweeps in willow, or it becomes parched by drought 
and seemingly dies, the first touch of moisture will 
start out the reserve buds and again it is on its way 
as tho nothing had happened. You have seen the 
willow-tree cut off at its base and left in a condition 
that would discourage the ordinary tree; and yet, 
in a year or two, there it is again, all foliage, spring- 
ing from the slender withes about the trunk. 

After the children have brought in the pussy- 
willow and the miracle of spring is on its way, the 
catkins become either silver or yellow. You find them 
swollen and fat. The golden ones are loaded with the 



246 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

stamens; the silver with the pistils. And soon the 
bees are busy; flying from the silver to the gold, fer- 
tilizing them with the pollen on their feet, while they 
get the first honey of the new year. And then, by 
and by, much later in the year, the willows are again 
shining in the golden light with long, waving burdens 
of the seeds that float away on land rivers and are 
so prolific that by nature's scheme if one in a bil- 
lion lodges happily and grows, the balance of nature 
is preserved, so far as the pussy-willow tree is 
concerned. 

So — here it is again, the new March-time in the 
arms of childhood, coming down the street, the pussy- 
willow ! Wonder what is within the furry coat ! What 
mystery of life; what casket of the Lord God's own 
placing! "Who knoweth the balancings of the clouds 
and how thy garments are warm when He quieteth 
the earth by the south wind? Hath the rain a father 
and who hath begotten the drops of dew?" How little 
we know — less even than Job! Little children know 
more than we — for they at least see miracles in the 
pussy-willow — while we often pass even the little chil- 
dren by and see no miracles, only Things. 



ON "THE TITLE AND THE FAMILY" 

OMEHOW, I always supposed that if I had 
been born a prince I would wear a feather in 
my cap and go around on a pony and never 
be called by any other name than my title. 
It never occurred to me that I should 
be concerned with having a father or a 
mother — mere appendages of childhood, useful chiefly 
at bed-time and in the dark watches of the night 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 247 

when dream-horrors come and we cry out for 
help, feeling sure of the tender watchfulness of 
motherhood. 

I used to read Fairy stories a good deal and my 
notion of a palace was perhaps distorted. There was 
little else for a prince to do than be waited upon. He 
clapped his hands and servants appeared. Of course 
a Prince never had to go to school. There were no 
permutations or combinations and the doctrine of 
chances never was to enter the case at all. Algebra 
was for studious boys, not for princes, and as for 
finding the perimeter of a duodecagon — the idea! I 
would not bother even to learn to spell — ^and as a mat- 
ter of fact, the old-fashioned princes and princesses 
did not bother to spell ; not even to read printing. 

The foregoing idea of royal households is possibly 
not unique with me. I find some of my neighbors 
have a rather hazy notion of a royal menage. Some 
of them seem to feel that a prince approaches his 
father, the King, on bended knee; salutes him lowly 
and says "Your Majesty," and never "dad." I have 
often wondered myself, and perhaps you have won- 
dered, if queens ever kiss their children; ever wipe 
their noses ; ever take off their bibs ; ever spank them ; 
ever call them by baby-names. Is love left out of 
royalty? Are domesticity and diet unknown in the 
palaces? Do princes call each other "Bill" or "Ed," 
or "Harry" or "Jim?" Do little princes have old 
Grannies, tender and dear old Grannies, to whom they 
can go in grief and who will give them two lumps 
of sugar in their tea (as Harry Lauder says his old 
Grannie did, when he went to visit her as a boy and 
for which he loves all old Grannies the world over, 
today) and do they have Grandpops also? 

I want you to know that I am not writing this as 
an advocate of royalty. None of the crowned heads 
are paying me any money for doing this piece of 



248 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

writing. I am just maundering along wondering 
about things in my own way. I am rather inclined 
to say that royalty does not interest me at all ; human- 
ity is what interests me — the simple fact that all 
human beings, rich and poor, plutocra,t, king, bourgeois, 
commoner, aristocrat, proletariat, are on the dead 
level when it comes to love of the helpless little mite 
that lies blue-veined within its mother's arms. We 
are all fathers, mothers, children, uncles, aunts, 
daddies, grand-daddies and grannies. 

The other day Congressman White of Lewiston, 
who says he reads this column religiously, for purpose 
of the humanities herein said to be contained, sent 
me a copy of the London Times that had escaped my 
notice — for I do read the Times. It contained an 
account of the death of Prince John, youngest son of 
George and Victoria Mary. He had been a poor little 
invalid all of his life and human love plainly was 
showered upon him by all around him. He never 
was seen in public ; for he had a disease which is called 
epilepsy and he might be seized anywhere. He was 
about fourteen years old when he died in his sleep. 
He was buried in a coffin made from an oak-tree grown 
at Sandringham, where he died Jan. 24, 1919. 

At the funeral, which was private, there were 
flowers from the family only and from the people of 
the household. The flowers from the parents bore a 
card which read, "For our darling Johnnie, from his 
sorrowing parents." The child's grandmother, who is 
Queen Alexandra, wife of the late King Edward VH., 
placed upon the simple little coffin a cross of lilies 
and orchids with this inscription: "In remembrance 
of my darling little Johnnie, Grannie's precious grand- 
s^n, whose memory will never fade. May he rest in 
peace forever with the Lord, tho we miss him 
sorely here, on earth. From his poor old Grannie, 
Alexandra." The little lad's sister and brother sent 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 249 

a wreath with this inscription on the card: "For 
darling Johnnie, from his sister and brothers, David, 
Bertie, Harry, George and Mary." 

There you are — not a prince in it! Not a King 
or a Queen! Nothing but that older title, dear thru 
all time, born "at life's drifted font," sacred in all of 
the estimates of life, death, and resurrection; secure 
in eternal edict of Love and its Laws — "Father"; 
"Mother"; "Sister"; "Brother"; "Grannie." By com- 
parison, how small all others seem! By comparison, 
how mighty is Love ! 



ON "CONFESSIONS OF A SMOKER" 

FIRMLY believe that the man who smokes 
deserves to be punished for it. Many of 
them agree with me and are willing to abide 
by the issue. Most of them have been pun- 
ished some. The very learning to smoke 
carries its qualms. I remember that when 
I set out to accomplish the education in tobacco, I was 
out in a sail-boat on a glassy, long-rolling sea, con- 
nected to the business end of a black manila cheroot. 
Roll on, thou dark blue ocean, roll — ^with accent on the 
"dark blue." And yet, dear reader, may I confess, 
I still have the awful habit of smoking, which I con- 
sider the most pernicious and which I advise all others 
to avoid. Why I did not lose the habit at that time 
and place, I never could understand — I lost so much. 

A correspondent writes me this week that the man 
who smokes should by all of the biblical interpretations 
of punishment be landed in hell. I agree with him. I 
cannot fancy people smoking — or wanting to smoke — 
in heaven. But that is not so much a question with 




250 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

me (for if a man had the desire to smoke in heaven, 
and as he has won the right to happiness, there would 
be smoking-rooms somewhere), as is the belief that 
a person here should try to please others and if those 
who do not smoke, feel about it as they say, why ! we 
should try to oblige them, same as we do people 
playing golf. It makes me mad to see people wearing 
out their lives and strength, playing golf when they 
might be sawing wood. I don't do it — why should 
others? It annoys me. They put their clubs on my 
toes in the trolley cars. They go about with a superior 
look on their faces. Must I submit tamely? Never! 
I want golf playing abolished by law! 

It has been decided also that the lowest sin of all 
smoking is the cigarette. I smoke cigarettes! I quit 
smoking cigars, for my health. It was being under- 
mined by cigars. The pipe is also a rudimentary sin. 
I selected the cigarette as the least harmful — the 
tapering off to the final release from the dread bond- 
age. I am still convinced that it is all that I hoped it 
to be; and yet I find that I am in bad company. I 
am gradually conquering it by getting onto simpler 
brands. I began with the twenty cent kind and am 
now down to the eight cent brand and hope by degrees 
to get down to the five cent; the three cent; the two 
cent, and thus taper off to nothing. I hope that a law 
may intervene to make cigarettes either cheaper or 
dearer — it does not matter much which. 

I am warning boys against the first cigarette. It 
is sure to make you trouble. There is something so 
seductive and seditious about it that it cannot be 
expressed in words. One cigarette will lead to another 
and then to another, and by and by, some night you 
will grow up (unless you die) and will go staggering 
home to your wife, mother and children, full of Camels, 
Meccas, Fatimas and Pall Malls, blear-eyed, incoherent, 
the mere semblance of a human being, a shame to your 
household and especially to your little children. 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 251 

This is no fancy picture. There is no more horrible 
fate than the man so lowly inclined. And it may all 
be stopped by omitting the first cigarette — all so easy. 
Think of the time and money you will save by going 
without. Think of the bondage of the smoker! He 
is tied for life to a box of matches and a cigarette, a 
pipe or a cigar. Men have wasted more time scratch- 
ing matches this very day, than would build a mer- 
chant vessel. Every day, men and women — for women 
also are smoking — put more time into smoking than 
would raise a million bushels of wheat. The figures 
are not mine ! 

Charles Lamb wrote the most pathetic tale of his 
bondage to the pipe. He was a melancholy man, 
who smoked incessantly. I do not. I smoke only now 
and then — mostly now. Lamb had the good habit of 
feeling his sin. He was a philosopher on the subject. 
I am only a warrior. I am "agin" it in theory and for 
it in personal practice. I do not like to have others 
smoke and not myself smoke. And yet I would like to 
see the day come when nobody smoked, for then I am 
sure I would not care to do it alone. 

You may say that this is a lamentable confession. 
I admit it. All writers come to the confessional 
now and then. I assume that you, dear reader, will be 
willing to come across with confessions equally per- 
sonal as to your pet sins. I am willing, nay eager, to 
be punished! Are you? I ask no leniency. I confess 
and abjure and yet smoke on. I am punished daily. I 
am punished nightly. I am punished in futurity. I 
am of the vast army — going to quit. I am waiting, 
waiting for sentence, of the high Court! And yet I 
do feel that when the Law of the Statutes or the Law 
of Habit or the Law of Righteousness does intervene 
between the smoker and his sins, between the pensive 
smoke wreath that makes his dreams all come true and 
the cold realization of a smokeless after-supper time 



252 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

with no book and pipe, no cigarette and typewriter 
between him and the cold outer world, some compensa- 
tion ought to be made him. He should have an extra 
halo on his brow; or a purple stripe on his harp, or a 
victory-badge on his little cloud-aeroplane to show 
"over there" that he was a hero over here. 



ON "THE UNIT OF SERVICE' 




E HAVE all lately been besought to do some- 
thing for the city of Auburn by way of 
standing for organization and service to the 
city thru such organization. 

I wonder if all of us give sufficient consid- 
eration to the matter of "units" of service. 
We agree that service is the thing. This war has 
enforced it as it never was enforced before. A Rock- 
land, Maine, pastor, who has been in the trenches, 
has found that the secret of bravery is in "merely 
serving." It seems to occupy the mind and uplift the 
soul. One is never afraid, while doing things for 
others. If serving others is the thing greatly to be 
desired, then it seems to be essential that we start 
something — as the saying is — start it now and start it 
at home. It is elementally a duty. He who fails in 
it may properly be called a slacker. It is a duty to 
turn the hand to the plow in the furrow in our own 
field; not be forever looking abroad for other fields 
that we fancy to be fairer and to need it more. 

You and I have seen men and women who were 
always wanting to do the big thing. They went roam- 
ing abroad, , evangelizing the new world while their 
own families went without decent food, decent atten- 
tion, decent clothing and got along with no house- 
keeping whatsoever. In olden days, they sewed for 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 253 

the heathen rather than patched the pants of the 
boys at home. There are some of these people now. 
They want to go over and win the war. It is very com- 
mendable — ^but they would probably be in the way. 
Far better to stay at home, sacrifice and give, and all 
the while try to make the home unit better and better. 
After the war, America is to be saved or lost by the 
condition of her cities and towns. If municipal and 
town government is a^ failure, then woe unto the 
state and nation ! 

Hence — the proper unit of service to the state is 
never to be overlooked. It begins with yourself. You 
are a unit and you must begin by consecrating a por- 
tion of yourself, at least, to the service of your imme- 
diate neighbors. Your original duty is to be clean and 
decent yourself. Then you must protect and educate 
and upbuild your children into manhood and woman- 
hood in the true sense. Service to neighbors is the 
starting-point outside the home. After that you 
s^rve the ward. Then you serve the town or city. 
Get the idea? If your town is clean and good and 
honest and loyal and devoted to the cause of the Folks 
by a concentration of such units as yourself, and if 
there be other towns made up of units like you, then 
the state becomes honest, loyal, clean and purely 
democratic. 

So I say it is impossible for any regeneration of 
statehood to come, unless it begins with the home-unit. 
Y'ou can't rebuild a people from the state down. It 
must come from the people up. We do not live in all 
Maine. We live on a certain street, in a certain neigh- 
boi^hood, in a certain town, in a certain state, in a 
certain Nation. If you and Tom and Dick and Harry 
aU agree to be helpful, generous, altruistic citizens 
and to make Auburn a wonder-city in respect to beauty 
and decency and livableness — Auburn will be helped 
and then the state and Nation, as well. It is SERVICE. 



254 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

It is a BIG work. It is a work every man-Jack can do 
and do well. It is a recipe for happiness. It is a cure 
for the Grouch. It is a road to sobriety and clean- 
liness. You talk about your duty to the War. Go 
to it. Cuss the Kaiser and buy a Liberty bond. Do 
everything you can — ^but do not forget that you live 
in Auburn, Maine; that the war will end; that you 
will be strengthening the arm of the Nation by every 
ounce you add to the power for good of your own 
community. 

YOU are the only one that can do it. "Son !" said 
a father to his small boy, "what are you scratching 
your head so much for?" "Pa," said the boy, "it is 
because I am the only one that knows it's itching." 
That is the situation. We, in Auburn, know what is 
the matter with Auburn. We alone know. It is up to 
us — all of us, to make the town better and better. This 
is service, to state, nation, and the new democracy. 



ON "DOWN AND NOT OUT' 




VER lie flat on your back and think it over! 

It is good for you, whether you lie under 

your automobile or out on a grassy hill-top 

under the skies. 
It gets the blood out of your head; it 

distributes the lymph more evenly; it gives 
you enlarged vision; it takes the conceit out of you, 
especially if it be under the automobile, referred to. 
And if something or someone happens to put you flat 
on your back — oh! the good it does you! It teaches 
you what your weaknesses are; develops just where 
the crick in your anatomy is located; teaches you to 
be humble. And you jump up ready to make a new 
start and a better one than ever before. 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 255 

Down! But not out! That's the position I am 
talking about. You have been going along pretty well 
upright on your feet. Something floors you. Pride 
goeth down with you, as saith the Scripture. You 
are flat on your back and taking the count. In that 
brief time you have leisure, untold, for thinking over 
when, how and where you received the punch that put 
you to the mat. You can, recumbently, size up the 
individual whose feet you perceive to be finally on 
a level with his head. What a chance to look the thing 
that floored you fair in the face. If it be extravagance, 
you see its foolish features. If it be dissipation, you 
feel its hot breath, disgustingly. If it be lust, you 
hear its ribald laughter. If it be negligence, you see 
its slothful habit. If it be sin, you turn away from 
its loathsome face. Never before did you see just 
what you were fighting. Now, at last, you see it as 
it really is. Help me up! Give me a hand. I know 
the chap that gave me the punch. He is weaker than 
I am. I know, now, where to strike him and strike 
to win. I'm none the worse for having been flat on 
my back, but rather, am I better — having been far 
from perfect, hitherto. 

And another thing as you lie flat on your back, 
looking up, you may see thru the azure into skies be- 
yond the blue. Doubtful if you ever looked at the 
sky much, anyway, when you were pursuing the pleas- 
ures of the cabaret — and elsewhere. Did you know 
the sky is very peaceful and very large and very old 
and very likely to outlast you and your fancies? Did 
you know that it hath many stars at night that seem 
to indicate that there are infinite fires beyond the 
Pleiades and infinite heavens in the space of worlds? 
Did you know that God gave it the color of the eyes 
of an innocent baby — ^blue, yea, very blue, as tho filled 
with celestial light. And by day what beats upon your 
face? What but sunshine, and what is better than 



256 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

that? Perhaps you may see far enough into the sky 
to catch some glimpse of a certain power in the 
heavens, not made of man but eternal — up there. 
Perhaps it will give you a lift. 

So! Get up! Go to it. You are not licked. Fact 
is you are a lot stronger than before you went to 
earth. Nobody can whip you, except yourself. The 
world is full of folks who would help you, if you 
needed it, but you don't. If you were any man before 
you went down, you are a better man now. Here is 
your motto: "Look up, not down; look forward, not 
back; lend a hand." When you are standing up again 
with the dawn of the new day in your face, pass 
on the word. 

And perhaps, in the newer life you will like to go 
out on the hills and lie flat on your back just for fun, 
and for the sake of the analogies. You will see a lot — 
birds in the tree, clouds in the skies, sun in the 
heavens, hope in the future. And all you will ask for 
is someone to brush off your back with the promise to 
your soul that henceforth it shall ever be kept clean. 



ON "THE ETERNAL SEARCH" 

AFCADIO HEARN tells us that in the house of 
any old Japanese family, the guest is likely 
to be shown some of the heirlooms. "A 
pretty little box, perhaps, will be set before 
you. Opening it, you will see only a beau- 
tiful silk bag, closed with a silk running-cord 
decked with tiny tassels. You open the bag and see 
within it another bag of a different quality of silk, 
but very fine. Open that, and lo! a third, which con- 
tains a fourth, which contains a fifth, which contains 
a sixth, which contains a seventh, which contains the 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 257 

strongest, hardest vessel of Chinese clay that you ever 
beheld. Yet it is not only curious but also precious; 
it may be more than a thousand years old." 

Historical, natural science and the study of life in its 
ultimate forces have to do with similar unwrapping. 
One removes one wrapper and then another. We try to 
count the threads, we try to analyze the envelopes; 
we try to find the secret that they contain. And when 
we do find it, we ask science what it is. She can only 
say, "I do not know." It is so old, so wonderful, that 
science can give no name to it. 

This is a very good illustration of the hopelessness 
of human effort to understand (Jod. The most learned 
theses end at something which man cannot name. He 
makes a big show of removing the envelopes; he 
displays his treasure. He cannot give you any 
further light. 

So, one may be pardoned for getting weary of 
human effort to solve life all at once, by writing a 
book about it. There is a story of a man who died 
and came back to earth. He had spent his life on a 
monumental work, intended to explain the mystery 
of this world and the next. He was permitted to 
wander thru all of the libraries where he expected to 
find his book. The only work of his that he found 
in any library was a little, thin volume of casual 
essays on his own personal experience. His solution 
had passed into oblivion ; his experience still lived. 

Perhaps the solution of life and its problems, its 
source and its destiny, may lie in the collection of scat- 
tered experiences, as the final pattern of the rug is 
in the collected threads. Science cannot answer a 
single question of elemental sort. It deals in processes 
but not in the "why" of one of them. It unfolds the 
element but cannot name it. It is lost in wonder in 
two worlds — the great spaces and the small. It makes 
a great parade of knowledge, but while it knows that 



258 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

the compass points north and that the seed germinates 
in ground — it has no name for the force that thus 
compels them. 

Everything that you study, therefore, tends to 
make you more firmly a believer in something you 
cannot name. "There are two books whence I collect 
my divinity," wrote Sir Thomas Browne, hundreds and 
hundreds of years ago, in that most wonderful of 
books "Religio Medici." "Besides that one written 
of God, there is another of his servant Nature, that 
universal and public manuscript that lies expanded 
before the eyes of all. Those who never saw Him in 
the one have discovered Him in the other." And 
Bacon said : "This I dare affirm in knowledge of Nature, 
that a little natural philosophy and the first entrance 
into it doth dispose a man to atheism, but, on the 
other side, much natural philosophy and wading deep 
into it, will bring about men's minds to religion." 

Thus, will you please bear with me for sermonizing 
in this day when religion of some kind is so sorely 
needed. Will you bear in mind that you may 
go as far as you like and, ever and ever farther on in 
the little box of your life, are things that contain 
things. And that when you go as far as you can — 
there is at last something you cannot name. Is it the 
eternal? Is it the everlasting. Almighty God? Men 
of science, thru all ages, have sought to discover him. 
It is the quest of all study. And is it not true, after 
all, that the Kingdom of God cometh not by observa- 
tion — but rather by faith and at the mother's knee? 



ON "GENTLENESS AS A PRACTICE" 

UR OLD friend, Marcus Aurelius, says: "Con- 
sider that gentleness is invincible, provided 
it is of the right stamp, without anything of 
hypocrisy or malice. This is the way to dis- 
arm the most insolent, if you continue kind 
and unmoved under ill-usage; if you strike 




in with the right opportunity for advice; if, when he 
is trying to do you an ill turn, you endeavor to recover 
his understanding and retrieve his temper by such 
language as this, *I shall not be injured, you are only 
injuring yourself.' Show him that bees never sting 
their oAvn kind." 

I can hear you say that this does not apply to war- 
times. And that is true! Moralities are swept away 
in times of war and that is one of the worst things 
about war. What ethical ruin it entails ! What dam- 
age it may do to forgiving natures ; what loss of moral 
susceptibilities; what devastation of gentleness! 

But, normally, this is good teaching and it is inter- 
esting to note what the pagan philosopher was 
thinking, only a few years after the Nazarene had 
finished teaching that nobler doctrine of brotherly love, 
gentleness, and altruism that are at the foundation of 
the moral as well as the spiritual code of Christianity. 
It seems as tho something of the spirit that emanated 
from the martyrs that Marcus Aurelius himself helped 
to make by his persecution of Christians, had gone 
from the prison to the palace. But Marcus Aurelius 
persecuted Christians, chiefly because of jwlitics and 
because some of the Christians, after Christ had gone 
on Home and they had lost His example, were very 
noisy and obstreperous persons and really encouraged 
persecution. Surely, they did not cultivate gentle- 
ness — all of them. 

There is no passage in all scripture that has been 
more misinterpreted than that suggestive of turning 



260 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

the other cheek. Sects have been formed on this pas- 
sage of scripture. They have usually demonstrated 
one thing. It is this : You cannot reason with insane 
people. Hang to your ethics as long as possible. Act 
mildly to the limit. Be gentle to the sane. Be kind to 
the insane. Summon all of your arguments, but when 
the tiger flies at your throat, either fight or run. And 
if he is a man-eating tiger, your duty as an exemplar of 
gentleness, is to fight. For tigers and Germans need 
to be restrained. Your first duty in gentleness is to 
the unprotected — to society in general. 

But there are lots of people who seem to think 
that when they are required to admonish, to advise or 
to differ with others, they must bellow all over the 
premises. They seem to think that they must bluster, 
swear, assume authority and announce "I am the 
boss." Nothing doing! No need whatever. The 
English officer often goes into battle with a light walk- 
ing stick in his hand. He does not need anything more 
for his "authority." So, too, you need not splutter and 
growl and spit like a bob-cat whenever you approach a 
neiglibor or an employee or an under-clerk in your 
department, with a reproval. The duty is not merely 
passive, therefore, as far as the philosophy of Marcus 
Aurelius is concerned. You are not merely to be gentle 
in reply to ungentleness, but also you should not start 
things in the first place. Keep your ethical shirt on. 
Keep the caloric from under your collar. Don't be a 
Hun ; be a Honey. 

Yes! The old Pagan was right. Remember how 
unconcernedly Socrates wore his old sheepskin when 
his scolding wife, Xanthippe, stole his only coat and 
ran out of the house with it. Xanthippe did it to see 
Socrates get mad. Socrates declined to be angry. 
Xanthippe never tried it again. The soft answer does 
indeed turn away wrath. Try it. And not only try 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 261 

that but also try to (be no partner in wrath. Let God 
alone indulge in Wrath — ^against them that wilfully do 
wrong in His sig<ht. Your part is to keep out of it, 
altogether. 



ON "SOME STOIC PHILOSOPHY" 

ECKON the days in which you have not been 
angry. I used to be angry every day; now 
every other day ; then every third and fourth 
day ; and if you miss it so long as thirty days, 
offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving to God. 

Epictetus wrote this, first, 1860 years 




ago. He was a Stoic slave to a Roman tyrant. He 
probably knew a thousand times more than his mas- 
ter and probably kept his temper better. 

If you need advice on general rules of conduct, 
there is no better than this. The man who becomes 
angry makes a mistake. He gives away, immediately, 
all the advantages he originally possessed. Suppose 
him to have been a man of good judgment in business. 
If he gets angry, he loses his business judgment. He 
no longer sees things clearly. His brain is stirred ; his 
blood is racing; his mind is confused; he makes mis- 
takes. Suppose him to have been a kindly man. If he 
i3 angry, he is apt to be unkind, nay, even brutal. 
Suppose him to have been a just man. He loses his 
sense of justice. Suppose him to have been a careful 
man. He loses his sense of care and exposes himself 
to dangers unwittingly. In short, the angry man is 
partially insane and the man who is not angry can 
always get the better of him, on equal terms, because 
he has about himself a degree of judgment and pru- 
dence and so-called "wits" that give him a great 
advantage. 



262 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

Here is an example. In prize-fighting, it is the 
effort of the one fighter to get the other angry. When 
he can do this so that the angry man actually "sees 
red," so to speak, then he has a distinct advantage 
over his unbalanced adversary. The wily fighter 
refuses to accept the bait. So, too, should you in 
business or in daily life. Every time you get angry, 
you average to make a fool of yourself ; your associates 
comment upon it; you are set down as a distinct 
failure in that respect. It is commented upon as a 
weakness. "Too bad," says the layman of the other- 
wise good lawyer, "he would be fine counsel in court 
if he didn't lose his temper." Joseph H. Choate won 
many cases against one of the greatest attorneys in 
the United States by playing with the man's temper. 
Mr. Choate was always affable. Nobody could get 
him angry. Mr. Choate could simulate anger; never 
indulging in it. If I were a lawyer, I would study 
Epictetus. Being a newspaper man, I don't have to. 
We are public servants and not permitted to get angry. 

Once a young couple were married. I was there 
and saw it. After the knot was tied and they came 
before the bride's father, a man of wisdom and 
equanimity, he gave them this advise: — 

"I cannot hope, my daughter, that you will go 
thru your married life without ever getting angry at 
your husband. I cannot hope, my son, that you will 
go thru life without ever getting angry at my 
daughter. But for the love of home and happi- 
ness, never — never — never — ^both get mad at the 
same time." 

This is scientific. Two mad men leave no wise 
counsel on the premises. A mad man and a mad 
woman are without restraint. So in this household, 
of which I speak, it has been the rule that when one 
gets angry the other keeps cool and goes to laughing. 
It's a good thing for young couples to remember. By 
and by, it leads to the philosophy of Epictetus. 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 263 

So, I say that it is money in your pocket not to 
get mad. More men have been ruined by law suits 
engendered by anger, than in any other one way. 
When you get mad you give away your trenches, your 
ammunition, your reserves and your leadership. The 
enemy then gets you. 




ON "GOOD MAJORS AND BAD" 

EOPLE whom office has never compelled to 
assume authority over others have missed 
a valuable lesson in social sympathy. To 
have been a "Major" or a "Colonel" in war 
is either to make a man or to mar him. 
Authority goes either to the head or to the 
heart. Sometimes it makes a whistle out of a pig's 
tail and sometimes it makes a pig's tail out of a 
whistle. Some of the greatest men in the land got 
their training as officers in the Civil War, and some 
of the failures of life were developed in the same way. 
One day after the Civil War, a man who was 
riding thru the farming districts of the Middle West 
stopped by the wayside to talk with a farmer. Sev- 
eral men were working in the field and the traveler 
was interested to learn that most of them had been 
soldiers in the war and that among them were a num- 
ber who had been officers. 

"That man over there," said the farmer, "happens 
to have been a private, but the man next to him was 
a corporal; that chap over there was a major and over 
in the next field is a man who was a colonel." 

"Indeed," said the traveler, "what kind of work- 
men are they?" 



264 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

"Well," said the farmer, "the private is a first- 
class man and the corporal is a pretty good worker." 

"Yes," said the traveler, "how about the major?" 

"He's about so-so." 

"But the colonel?" persisted the traveler. 

"Well," said the farmer, "I ain't a-goin' to say a 
word against any man that fit in the war to save the 
Union, but I notify you right here and now, I ain't 
goin' to hire no brigadier generals." 

We had a speech at the Bowdoin College Alumni 
Association the other evening here in Lewiston by an 
officer of the late war about officers and service. He 
said that he never would advocate a form of compul- 
sory military service that forced a boy to have his 
spirit broken by a martinet. The glory of the Ameri- 
can soldier was that he had his self-respect still with 
him, not broken to the Kaiser's goose-step and not 
broken on the wheel of military discipline that intended 
to reduce all men to a dead level of blind and unrea- 
soning automata. He said that there were two kinds of 
officers — we had them both. One would call his men 
before him and say: "I am your superior officer be- 
cause I happen to be such. I claim no superiority as 
a man or a citizen. I recognize you as fellow-Ameri- 
cans entitled to my best consideration and care. I 
am, however, your commanding officer, and as such, 
no matter how it has come about, I am entitled to 
your obedience. The discipline of the service demands 
it; your country is entitled to it and I shall see that 
the service gets it. We are working together for 
the same end." 

There was another kind of officer who said nothing 
of the kind and showed that he believed that the 
men were beneath the consideration of his mightiness. 
He treated men as slaves and with the fixed determi- 
nation to exact the last measure of humility from them. 
It was his pleasure to break their wills ; drive them 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 265 

to tasks beyond their strength ; mete out punishments 
for the sake of showing his power and exact the full 
measure of etiquette toward his almightiness. Men 
so subjected often come out of the army damaged in 
Americanism — ^which is soul and body of life. 

The army does not differ much, after all, from 
business. The martinet in the office is responsible for 
most of the un-Americanism in the shop. And it is 
odd that most of these men have sprung themselves 
from the shop. Given authority and forging ahead 
they have fought their way to the top literally over 
the bodies of others, and established there, have for- 
gotten that they once were shopmen. They walk the 
quarterdeck of the business craft much as the old- 
fashioned "bucko" mates and captains of the old 
clipper ships that once went wind- jamming around the 
Horn, ruling with a curse and a blow as prelude to 
the command. 

But — the day is past, long past, we hope. It can't 
be done any more. Some must always lead; do 
the thinking; stand at the wheel and steer; navi- 
gate the ship; fight the corps; but he need 
not be drunk with his power. Nor need the 
soldier or the workman emulate the tyrant. The 
mutineer and the slacker is as bad as the bad-boss. 
Cheerful commands, cheerful compliance, comradeship, 
mutual responsibility, mutual advance — these are the 
solvents of all future questions. You may think that 
this is preaching. If you do, ask someone who has 
been in the service and who has done his own think- 
ing. We need good officers, good heads of business, 
bigger ideals, better faith both ways and all around. 




ON "WHEN I AM TIRED" 

RE we ever really tired, except it be both of 
the body and the mind. Tired souls are not 
those who have merely toiled ; for the muscles 
soon relax, the functions restore themselves 
and again the body finds itself like the Ford 
car, ready for another cranking with a full 
tank of gasoline and the road stretching before it full 
of wonders and with strange adventure awaiting it. 
No — ^we are not "tired out" except it begin with the 
mind and the nerve-force. We may sit a brief hour 
before the fire and watch it leaping up its ladder to the 
open sky and be refreshed, but if the mind be disturbed 
and the soul sick, then all of the fire and all of the arm- 
chair will avail but little. "I am weary of my life 
because of the daughters of Heth," said Rebekah to 
Isaac. The mother was the first in history to proclaim 
the state of her mind — tired out with worry and 
watching lest her son Jacob take a wife out of the 
daughters of Canaan. 

I am impressed with the error of them that work 
with the hands and the bodies alone. How little they 
know of the utter weariness of the other half of the 
world — the desk-ridden toiler who sits hour by hour 
over the problem of the day. How little they appre- 
ciate how willingly he would exchange the ceaseless 
round of figures and papers, the struggling with prob- 
lems of research and accomplishment, the demands of 
the cashier's office and the bank, for the strenuous toil 
over the machine, the "going over the top" against 
obstacles in the material world, the building of things 
in the open, the war against earth, water, tides of the 
sea, the forests and all things primeval. That flayed- 
out feeling of brain-fag! That never-ending gnawing 
at the heart-strings, that sense of futility as one 



JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 267 

searches his soul and his mind for inspiration to the 
betterment of mankind, the drain on the preacher, the 
teacher, the writer, the manager of a business. It is 
all folly ! This idea of labor. As I have said a dozen 
times, labor is not "work;" labor is rough-going in 
work. The ship labors in the sea ; the engine labors at 
its task ; but when silently moving on, it "works" well. 
We are born in "labor." God, alone, works. 

Let it be said, therefore, that never can there be any 
reorganization of toilers, that does not include the 
brain-workers and give them a share in the production 
of the world. No Soviet rule (surely coming in no dis- 
tant day, I make this a prophecy, tho not by revolution 
but in simplified and useful form of liberalism) can be 
effective that rules out the worker in the office, at the 
typewriter, over the inventor's or the editor's desk. 
These know quite well what it means to be tired — tired 
of the weariness that bids sleep fly away ; that rumples 
the pillow; that makes the feet feel like lead and the 
head too tired to lift. No rest assuages the weariness 
and no balm but out-of-doors and change can bring 
relief. These men cannot be counted out of the class 
of "laborers." "Much study is a weariness to the flesh," 
saith the preacher. 

We also have what we call a "good tired." We 
have it when we come back from fishing a long, happy 
day on a Maine lake, with the blue above, the fish 
striking with hunger, the wind sweet on our faces, the 
mountains clear in the distance. We have it after we 
have worked happily with the body all day long and 
accomplished things. We have it when we have come 
back from a long tramp in the autumn woods and see 
the lights of the camp welcoming our tired feet to a 
sweet rest by the camp-fire. But we do not have it, 
save the mind has been employed in happy things. We 
do not have it when the body rises again and again to 



268 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

toil with no enjoyment. We do not want these tired 
folk. We do not want the world run, so that men and 
women shall be tired and unhappy. The best work is 
from the man who sings at the machine or smilingly 
takes up his morning duty at his desk. Life is never 
going to get ahead making other people unhappy. We 
shall go mad, unless we have relief for the mind from 
fear of want and from the drive of life urging us on to 
the grave. These are the things in which tolerance of 
the workers must come to the rescue of the situation. 
We must have the mind cared for, first ; the drag upon 
the nerve-force stopped; the never-ending draft upon 
resources ended, so far as is possible. 

The old-fashioned father used to regulate the boy's 
work. If the lad said "Father, the fish are biting well 
today," the father said, "You keep right on working, 
sonny, and they won't bite you." Time may be when 
a paternal government will see to it that everyone 
produces something — ^no idlers, no drones and no over- 
worked. Then "labor" will not quit whenever it gets 
ten dollars a;head and go on a pleasure trip, but all alike 
be busy and happy. I wonder ! 



ON "SEARCHING YOUR NEIGHBOR'S PAST" 

F YOU have known men at all you have known 
the man who is good because he was born 
that way and the man who is good because 
he has fought it out and decided that it is 
better, that way. 

How likely we are to search the past of 
people to find out if they have ever been bad. How 
prone are we to say that such and such a good man 
has not so much to the credit as has his neighbor who 
never has fallen because he never was tempted. We 




JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 269 

run over the records of men's lives with a searching 
finger and stop at all the black spots; as tho all the 
white pages and all the tender deeds and all the char- 
ities they have done afterwards, had no power to 
blot a line. 

And yet — in Grod's word, we find that this is not 
the right way. And in all philosophy and in all fair- 
play and in all practical common-sense we know that 
it is not the right way. How can it be right? Here 
are two men — Ox.a born under every adverse influence, 
without parentage that could foster his better nature ; 
cast out on the world when it was a battle to live; 
made to fight and conscious that it was his wits 
against the world, or starvation was the alternative. 
And here is the other, gently reared, no need to worry 
for money or friends. And if both are equally honest ; 
equally fair; equally kind to his neighbors; equally 
respectable and decent at the age of maturity, which 
of the two deserves the greater praise? It is a shame 
— the way the world refuses to forget the evil that 
men have done while yet they live and are repentant. 
It is a shame that the Past rises to confront so many 
mpn and women who have sinned and repented and 
reformed and found the better way. Instead of being 
reviled, they should be given medals of honor, the 
cross of victors, the assurance that the world gives 
to them that fight good fights, and win. 

And it is true in ail philosophy and in all times. 
I turn to the thumb-worn pages of my Montaigne who 
says, "I fancy virtue to be something else than the 
mere propensity to goodness; something more noble 
than good-nature, that we are born into the world 
withal. Well-disposed and well-descended souls pur- 
sue, indeed, the same methods and represent the same 
face that virtue itself does, but the word virtue im- 
ports, I know not what more great and active than 
merely for a man to suffer himself, by a happy dispo- 



270 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 

sition to be gently and happily drawn to the rule of 
reason. He who by a natural sweetness and facility 
should despise injuries received, would doubtless do a 
very laudable thing ; but he who, provoked and nettled 
to the quick by an offense, should fortify himself with 
the arms of reason and after a great conflict master 
his passion, would doubtless do a great deal more. The 
first would do well ; the latter virtuously." 

Thus, be it my message, today, to say what every- 
one knows and so few remember — that no man who 
has never been tempted knows how strong he really 
is; and no man who has been tempted and fallen is 
beyond temptation; and the man who is redeemed 
beyond danger but is stronger for the experience, 
is the nearer to being master of his soul. And this is 
no plea for yielding to temptation, but a warning to 
them who will make no excuses for the falling. It is 
far better to conquer in the first place; but it is better 
to conquer in the second or third place than not at all, 
and victory makes us stronger, by the sense of power 
in itself. 

There is no meaner soul than the untried, scorning 
the unredeemed. I should be afraid of myself, had I 
no charity. I should be afraid of my neighbors, had 
they no pity. For virtue is an active, not a passive 
attribute. It grows not by lying dormant but by exer- 
cise. It becomes strong in temptation and weak in 
the cloister. Beware, therefore, how you search the 
past of men and women. Rather consider them as 
they are, for goodness and virtue are constant working 
forces to be prized for what they may do — not for 
what they have done. 



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